What Have You Done To My Little Cable Boy? 2966 Posts 5/10
Posted - Apr 14 2025 : 2:26AM
But piracy has been around since the end of the 90s and didn't prevent the golden era in the mid 00s. For me, the biggest problem is clearly the self-promotion platforms. Thanks to them, there are no more new stars. And without money-generating stars, studios don't shoot financially extensive projects and without them, studios lose relevance. And if the long-established studios give up, there will be no more new blood because the financial risk is simply too risky in a business without moneymakers.
The piracy excuse I think is largely bullshit. There are absolutely sites and studios out there who manage to get their content completely locked down and away from the pirates. Now maybe that's a lot easier for smaller independent sites with less content they need to protect, compared to a large network site putting out a dozen scenes each week, but it still can be done. In the long run though, they're all going to need to find a new business model. There's just not enough people out there willing to pay $30 per month or more for porn. How they've managed to stay solvent this long is a mystery.
^ You win 'most insightful post of the week/month & possible year'. That's where the industry is right now & it's hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
When consumers think porn piracy, they usually think fileshare, because that's been the main form of piracy for music and movies. This has never been a huge concern for us and users doing it are unlikely to convert to paying users.
Tubes were a bigger problem because it made it way easier to pirate. Back when it first exploded with the youtube era, it was rampant and a major headache. Piracy is not altruistic. There is a financial incentive to most content piracy. At the time, there was a lot of advertising money thrown around by cams and scams (penis pills, dating, etc) that anyone could launch a tube and be financially viable by just posting pirated content. If the rights owners complained, some tubes made enough they could just settle and take down the content, rather than being pro-active (and this was one of the points ExodusCry pointed out in their campaign against pornhub). A lot of the industry turned a semi-blind eye because unlike filesharing, users did convert to paying customers.
Nowadays, the advertising money has dried up a little, and a lot of tubes are not financially viable so they have shut down. The biggest tubes are content makers themselves. But we've taught a generation that porn is free and it's really hard to break the habit. The tube owners could paywall everything right now and it could force a change in behavior, but they are stubborn.
A potentially larger issue than piracy is the sheer amount of content. The porn shot 20 years ago or even 30 years ago, is pretty good. I'm competing with old content that is perfectly viable. While the same can be said about mainstream movies and tv, porn is not consumed the same way and we face more and more restrictions everyday. This makes the amount of content an issue.
Add to this the rise of individual content creators. I don't think it is as big of a problem as some people believe because netflix is doing fine even though there is youtube. But the reach does seem to be shrinking while the content is ever increasing.
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Lezzyist Deactivated User
Make Porn Erotic Again 1736 Posts 9/19
Posted - Apr 14 2025 : 3:15PM
I am headed in this direction. Part of it is that I am apparently into pretty niche stuff (basic lesbian porn in which the people act normal and engaged), and the other factor is that the quality is just not there, for the most part. I could buy a lot more, but I currently only have one $20 studio subscription because the industry mostly makes stuff that I would want to be paid for my time spent watching.
Honestly I don't think the industry does enough to leverage the endless amount of archival content out there. There's plenty of stuff from the 70's-2000's out there that people would probably be interested in seeing which isn't be monetized. Even the Network sites like Naughty America, Bangbros, Reality Kings have been putting out content for nearly 25 years now, at some point they'd probably make more money just monetizing the old stuff (say 5 years or older) by making it available at a steep discount, or free with advertising. No one who subscribes to Bang Bros at $35 a month is doing so to watch grainy Standard Definition Porn from 2002, but there are likely people out there who would be happy to watch that stuff for, say, $5 per month.
^ I'd be happy to have access to something like that. I'd pay more than $5 per month, but would prefer downloads too. Studios like Anabolic, Diabolic, Zero Tolerance, Rosebud, Leisure Time, LBO, Al Borda, Zane, VCA and many others would be great to have access to again. I'd even be happy with the lower resolutions of the day (480p) to have access to them again.
"Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval." ~ Leonard Rossite 2342 Posts 12/17
Posted - Apr 14 2025 : 9:30PM
The internet greatly facilitates piracy along with a variety of other crimes. Think about it, you don't have to go into a bank to rob it or even hold up a jewelry store - you can just rob them blind with online access or redirect the vehicle for the perfect heist. Pornhub came along in 2007, the impact of that was so great that there was entire podcast series devoted to 'the butterfly effect.' Yes, the business model will have to change and I suspect that interactive porn like webcamming is going to play a major role. Almost like the difference between a movie theater and a theatre for plays: you go to a play for the experience which is what webcamming is like as opposed to the movie theater experience where you are increasingly inclined to stay home where it's quiet. You can hit pause, nobody is talking or giggling in the background etc. Most studios I know of are not able to lock their scenes away so they follow the VMG of tracking the pirates and suing them to get their videos taken down. According to Holly Randall, there's not nearly as much money as people think there is to be made in porn these days.
I've delivered a business talk arguing piracy - not porn - drives technology. You can go back to the printing press: pirating books. Pornographers are often early adopters to new tech because of liberal attitudes and lower costs, that the myth was created that porn drives technology.It's not just "these days". If you count onlyfans as porn, the porn market has exploded over the last 5 years. But even factoring in cams, porn was formerly no more than a handful of billions per year. It only appeared like a lot of money because there were few players in the space so everyone made good money, and porn touches everyone's lives considering how small a business it is.
"Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval." ~ Leonard Rossite 2342 Posts 12/17
Posted - Apr 16 2025 : 1:05AM
I decided to look it up - the numbers are staggering but it does make one wonder? Why was the impact of Pornhub billed as such a terrible thing if in 2024 - $10 to $12 billion of the porn industry's revenue came from the United States and the porn industry is worth approximately $97 billion . . .
That article cites zero sources so all I have to say is bull and shit. They're taking the one statistic that is available (and may not even be reliable) which is views on a Tube site, assigning an arbitrary value to what each view is worth to advertisers, and adding up the total. I have no idea how big the entire porn industry is in terms of dollars and cents (no one does, all these companies are private and aren't exactly sharing financial statements) but I can guarantee you unequivocally it's not even in the same universe as $97 billion, it cannot possibly be. As most it's a fraction of that.
$97 billion is a wild overestimation by Kassia Wosick, just like the media reporting Black Chyna made hundreds of million from onlyfans. If that were true, why is she slumming it? Mindgeek/Aylo is the biggest pure porn company in the world and they only make half a billion per year. Even if you include the cams, scams, and illegal stuff, it is nowhere near 97 billion.
And some sources dont cite their research. (and you can't 100% trust the "stats" pornhub publishes on their blogs sometimes) It's very similar to those "celebrity net worth" sites. I specifically pointed out the $97 billion is an overestimate from professor Kassia Wosick. She is the one quoted for that number, but she is not an industry insider and her book, "Sex Love and Fidelity", is not about our industry. None of the sources explain how she came to that number.
that's still a long way off from $97 billion. I can't imagine the japanese porn industry and the underground market in Asia and Middle East, to make up that difference.
"Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval." ~ Leonard Rossite 2342 Posts 12/17
Posted - May 3 2025 : 12:33AM
Thinking back to the previous poster who brought up adult performers and pornstars not being the same thing; I agree wholeheartedly. An adult performer can become a pornstar but to become a pornstar, you have to start from being an adult performer. You don't just enter the industry with instant credibility because talk is cheap. Those who become pornstars want to learn about and master the craft, there's not the assumption that because they are promiscuous with a number of partners or have a high sex drive with a single partner or even had sex in a risky place where they could have been seen that they are automatically going to be great at porn. I suspect the reason why pornstars are far and few between is because of the need to be 'On' all the time, when the only access fans had to pornstars was snail mail along with conventions - one gets to relax and enjoy just being themselves. With the internet, now you have to be on via social media and email to say nothing of those fanatics who actively try to violate the personal lives of pornstars to a disturbing degree with the justification being that they are 'asking for it' which is ludicrous. Add content creation and there's less incentive to work for a studio when you can create your own material. Phoenix Marie, Julia Ann, Dana Dearmond, Casey Calvert, Sinn Sage, Dana Vespoli, Adriana Chechik, Cherie DeVille, Aaliyah Love, Brandi Love, Riley Reid, Cadence Lux, Joanna Angel, India Summer, Chanel Preston, Angela White and who can forget the ultimate showstopper of porn known as Abella Danger? I call her a showstopper due to being in my opinion - one of, if not the most prolific pornstar in the past 25 years. How many people in this business hit 1000 scenes in seven years?? The common thread in all the pornstars mentioned and you can easily see this in a Holly Randall Unfiltered episode is they all fell in love with the industry both the business and the pleasure side of it. They are genuinely eager and excited to work on set with their respective scene partners, they approach things accordingly to ensure long lasting careers as opposed to the adult performers who often fizzle out in less than five years. Pornstars have a versatile edge that is increasingly hard to come by and a psychological stamina that is nothing short of impressive. The problem with technology in today's porn is that it is as lethal to the wellbeing of performers as it is beneficial and that is enough to scare a number of up and comers off.
^I also agree with you that a porn performer is not the same as a ponstar but I think many people use the term pornstar to describe just about anyone who has done porn and to me that dilutes what it means to be a pornstar. I also agree with you that you don't enter in the industry and you get instant credibility but I think you and I would agree that some performers have more going for them on day one than others and that often goes a long way for how quickly they reach the true of pornstar.
Where you and I differ is that I don't think porn performers need to be on all the time. I'm not on any social media app and have never been and never will be so even the most prolific porn performer was posting multiple times a day. She probably would not make it onto my radar unless she worked for a studio or I found some of her content on C4S or Many Vids. A good example would be Cory Chase who I first discovered on C4S 10 years ago. In fact any performer who did porn prior to the 90's was only known because of trade magazines and the likes and that didn't stop any of them from reaching the status of pornstars. I would argue that the vast majority of performers who became true pornstars did so prior to most if not all social media platforms or what the internet is today.
Of course my idea of what constitutes a true pornstar may be different because of when I first started to watch porn when the sex portion wasn't the only thing you had to be good at but what came before and after was also important. Today that is almost never an important thing because gonzo doesn't require it and gonzo is about all we now have for porn.
Interesting thread. It could be a lot shorter though because as a few previous posters have already stated is that it all starts and ends with piracy/Tubes, etc. As someone who has been in this business for 27 years as a performer and director, I feel uniquely qualified to speak on this. Francesca and I have owned our own movies since 2001. First at JM Productions, then at EXP/Juicy and the last 13years at Evil Angel. Piracy has changed everything from monetization to the content you see in mainstream adult. Not only did it change the product to free but more importantly changed the next generation of consumer to expect it free. It has a trickle down effect all the way down the chain. I could talk for days about it but we just do our best to adapt.
I've watched this happen over the course of the 25+ years this site has been online. Today's 20-something porn consumers generally think the internet exists to provide an endless supply of free porn.
What Have You Done To My Little Cable Boy? 2966 Posts 5/10
Posted - May 10 2025 : 4:48PM
Piracy has been around for decades and has not stopped or limited the great Golden Era (circa 2005-2013). Piracy will have its share of the downfall, but the fact that porn has become such a wasteland has other reasons for me. I read a comment somewhere ".....Porn has become so irrelevant, people don't even steal it anymore". Yes, piracy has caused damage. But the final blow was struck by others.
Porn piracy has been around for decades but the problem is tube and torrent sites which haven't been around for as long. Being an old fart give me a perspective that younger people can't have because they weren't there in the beginning. There was a time when you could only rent porn at a video store and the owner paid a shitload of money to get those tapes. We are talking about 100$ for one tape so buying more than a couple was not always an option for the small mom and pop shops. Then there was the problem that if you wanted to copy a tape than you needed the equipment and that was also not cheap. Of course even if you could copy a porn tape. It's not like you could sell it online or advertise it on a trade magazine so ultimately you could only sell it locally thereby significantly limiting the reach of porn pirates. DVD didn't change much except that by the time the technology took over for tapes. You could buy porn on tapes and dvd from various dealers and make copies but then again selling those bootleg copies was not an easy thing to do.
If tube and torrent sites weren't such a problem for the porn industry as a whole then please tell me why studios like: Diabolic, Anabolic, JM production, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, Sin City, Red Light District, West Coast, Zero Tolerance, New Sensations, Wicked, Vivid and I could go on and add another dozen names for what are essentially dead studios? If not porn piracy then what killed those studios? These were powerhouses who released multiple titles per year with most of them making money.
P.S: I don't know where you read that porn has become so bad that people don't steal it anymore because it will take me less than 30 seconds to find just about any recent video on a tube or torrent site.
"Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval." ~ Leonard Rossite 2342 Posts 12/17
Posted - May 12 2025 : 3:05AM
The internet gives both a great and unsettling level of access to adult performers. Consider how many highly popular ones have people running their respective twitter or instagram etc because they are being bombarded by insatiable fans. It's far harder to separate the pornstar life from the civilian life than it used to be. Nicky Huntsman herself said that after her third scene, everybody knew about her. Now multiply that by 50 or 100 if you're talking upper tier and elite performers. You may try to keep a low profile but all it takes is a few people recognizing you and you're having to be back on as the pornstar rather than as the person. Some people are brave enough to share their real selves forcing fans to see them as more than just sex workers.
What Have You Done To My Little Cable Boy? 2966 Posts 5/10
Posted - May 12 2025 : 11:14AM
By tube sites - are we talking about those sites where short clips of scenes are offered in poor quality? So not even the complete scene? I can't imagine that something like that is still relevant these days. It is offered, but I don't think people use it much anymore. The same applies to torrents. Torrents took off in the early 2000s. Almost 25 years now. Nevertheless, Mason was able to deliver one masterpiece after another. Torrents have long since ceased to be relevant. They were already replaced by one-click hosts at the end of the 2000s. They were free back then and were booming, just like porn was booming. Later, OCH became paid and although porn is still uploaded with OCH, the download numbers are hardly worth mentioning according to a statistic I saw in 2022.
What led to the deaths back then - lack of quality in my opinion. Mason delivered quality and survived piracy. These days I see two big factors - self-marketing and oversaturation. Girls go other ways to earn money with erotica. There are hardly any money makers left. And without money makers, studios no longer take financial risks. Most girls don't stay in the business for more than a handful of scenes. On the other hand, you have a completely overaged, oversaturated male pool. People are simply tired of seeing the same old male faces, now 50-60 years old, for 30 years. Layla Jenner was one of the last hyped girls of recent years. Suddenly they said she was coming back. Scene is with Jules Jordan - thread was dead immediately. Scene immediately failed to spark any more interest. It lacks freshness, it lacks excitement, it lacks progression.
There definitely needs to be a distinction made between Tube sites which are largely just amateur content mixed with shot clips of mainstream stuff for advertising and "tube" sites which just flat out steal content from paid sites. Honestly I think the legitimate sites are a much bigger threat than the piracy ones. People stealing porn are by and large not people who were ever going to pay for it in the first place. The average porn consumer isn't following specific girls or companies, they just want to see reasonably attractive people having sex long enough for them to get their rocks off, and there are more than enough avenues out there to find that for free. Not only can you find it for free, but there seems to be an endless amount of reasonably attractive people out there willing to have sex on video for free or close enough to free (ie: Monetization through advertising). Most people are never going to pay for porn because they don't have to, it's not about piracy, it's about a website charging $39.99 a month for a subscription trying to compete with people who have no issue posting videos of themselves sucking dick on the internet for free every week. The studios are never ever going to win that battle.
You have plenty of tube sites that offer short clips but there are a few tube sites that offer high quality full scenes. You just have to do some research to find them and I'm pretty sure the people who don't want to pay for porn know where to find those tube sites. If Tube and torrent sites weren't relevant than why would anyone bother updating them? I can't speak for when torrents first started but if you think that they aren't as relevant now than you are fooling yourself. Torrents are still huge. All that has changed is that there are less because the source where they pick from is smaller now. IN large part because of what they keep doing.If not for porn piracy then why isn't Mason shooting more of those masterpieces like she used to. The last movie IAFD list for mason was 12 years ago. Why did she stop shooting films? If she was able to survive piracy then where is she now. Just look at her sites? HardX, LesbianX and darkX. Are they still updating on a regular basis with new content like they used to? The answer is no so what hapopened?
What Have You Done To My Little Cable Boy? 2966 Posts 5/10
Posted - May 13 2025 : 1:55AM
We can only speculate here. There may be private reasons, there may be economic reasons. I myself believe that the economic risk of shooting a showcase without moneymakers is simply too high. Everything that used to make the studios money is now doing its own thing on self-marketing platforms. Even the guys have disappeared behind the curtain. What remains are directors who are approaching 60 and only shoot with themselves and a few guys who don't have what he needs.
Studio Porn is like the NFL if there were no more colleges.
And why people upload stuff to tube sites or OCH - because they earn money with it. Not because of the number of downloads, but because of the advertising that is placed on such sites.
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Lezzyist Deactivated User
Make Porn Erotic Again 1736 Posts 9/19
Posted - May 15 2025 : 11:55PM
Another reason I find myself not really bothered about seeing less studio porn is that...what the FUCK is with the porn audience's taste in women?
The majority of performers fall into 1 of 2 camps or both:
- Built top-to-bottom like my 10-year-old nephew
or
- Seemingly intentionally botched surgeries everywhere, from the "breasts" and "butt" to the lips.
Am I still the only weird mofo who still actually likes actual tits? (*sighs*, yep, probably)
At least, this is how 90% of the people on GG sites look. What the fuck.
What Have You Done To My Little Cable Boy? 2966 Posts 5/10
Posted - May 16 2025 : 8:16AM
I believe this is also a social phenomenon and goes through cycles. The fact that women's proportions are always viewed differently has been with us for decades. In the 90s, very, very thin women were considered particularly attractive. At the beginning of the 2000s, it was big breasts. A little later again, everyone wanted a big booty. And if you look at Euro Porn these days, for example, the woman should ideally have the body of a little boy. That was also very different back in the days of Angel Dark and Rita Faltoyano.
Real tits are great but the fake tits from 90's - early 00's were really well done but now they are cheap and cheap looking a lot of the time maybe they changed what goes in them or the early surgeons were just that much better at doing them or better regulated.
You're definitely not, nothing deflates my dick faster than bad plastic surgery. Actually, there's one thing that comes close which seemed to be getting more popular, and that's nipple piercings and especially vag piercings
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Lezzyist Deactivated User
Make Porn Erotic Again 1736 Posts 9/19
Posted - May 16 2025 : 4:11PM
Tits, even small ones, are made to be squeezed and manipulated. I bet the 90s and early 00s had that weird, frozen-in-place look and feel too. I hate when when all the other woman can do is just kinda sit her hands on top of the monstrous jutting rocks.I must now admit to being a nipple piercing (and belly button piercing) person. I usually know *why* I like something, but haven't figured out my nipple/belly button jewelry thing. Agree with the last bit; I mostly do not like any kind of vulva piercing.
"Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval." ~ Leonard Rossite 2342 Posts 12/17
Posted - Jun 4 2025 : 1:06AM
I found myself thinking about this recently: we all know that what a feeding frenzy that occurs when a new female talent under the age of 25 debuts in the industry, the same cannot be said of the over 30 crowd but if you go by the numbers - most of the heavy hitters reaching 1000 scenes and over all started in their 30s. A few maybe in their late 20s, I'm not saying there's not exceptions to the rule such as Abella Danger, Casey Calvert, Sinn Sage, Angela White and Julia Ann but it seems to me that the 30+ crowd is seemingly better suited for a long term career in porn than the 18-25 group so just maybe the industry might shift their thinking. I was looking at the thread of Elizabeth Skylar who has a knockout body and I was reminded of the British Barbie Katy Jayne who somehow isn't being snatched up for bookings. Or heck look at Reya Lovenlight with a cracking body not unlike Syren De Mer who has yet to really break out of the box. The argument will be that porn is a young person's game but looking at the top tier talent and in the age of the internet, that mentality should be thrown in the rubbish bin because I would love to see more mature talents being booked and cultivated for lengthy careers.
Edited by - Whyspers2Scorpio on 6/9/2025 1:23:16 AM
^I think the feeding frenzy directed at new performers has less to do with their age and more to do with them being new. Maybe there is a bigger frenzy if the performer is younger than 25 but I think that women between the age of 25 to 30 might get just as big a frenzy as their younger counterparts but these performers are less common. Most new performers tend to be in their late teens to early 20's and that's been a constant for decades. I would absolutely go ape shit if we saw more older women in porn because while I enjoy seeing new women in porn. I've always said that variety is the spice of life and only women in their late teens/early 20's is getting boring. Of course I'm an old fart so older women may mean something very different for me than someone in his 20's.
"Pornography: That which excites, whether from approval or disapproval." ~ Leonard Rossite 2342 Posts 12/17
Posted - Jun 4 2025 : 11:33PM
^
Reya started in 2024 and has 9 scenes to her name, Elizabeth Skylar has 44 despite starting 2023. Clearly there's not a feeding frenzy surrounding them, contrast that with Cherie DeVille who started in 2011 and shot 36 scenes in 2012 and probably set a new record for how many scenes you can shoot in a year in 2013. Similar deal with Brandi Love although she started early, in 2012 and 2014 - she was very prolific. Alexis Fawx - started in 2010 and blew the roof of the industry with a plethora of scenes from 2011, 2012 and 2016. There are some who defy the trend but by and large, the younger and more innocent you are entering the industry, you become all the rage. I'm not attacking that model of things but I do think if they shifted focus, they would find high number of 'MILF' performers who have their heads on straight, a healthy drive with plenty of gas in the tank. They also seem less prone to burnout compared with their younger counterparts, some will claim that they got bored with the daily grind of the industry while others just needed a breather but I suspect technology plays into that a great deal. If you want to be just 'insert civilian name here' rather than your porn identity all the time . . . that gets tricky. All it takes is one person to recognize you and you are instantly compromised. Jelena Jensen actually talked about this, some fans are respectful but others are not so much.
^While it's true that Cheri started in 2011. Seeing as she only has 3 videos in that period. I think it's more accurate to say that she really started in 2012 but regardless whether it's 2011 or 2012. The one thing that is clear is that the bulk of the video she shot in 2011 to 2013 were lesbian only. In fact she has only about 25 videos that contain some b/g stuff compared to about a 100 solo, non-sex, and lesbian only videos. Even if there was a fending frenzy for Reya or Elizabeth. Neither women would be able to remotely come close to Cherie's numbers.
I'd also like to say that while a modern performer can create a huge feeding frenzy. One of the best example of recent time was Dakota Tyler who if she had wanted to could have been huge. Would still never have come close to a one of her counterpart from a decade or more ago because the industry is no longer the same. I think a modern feeding frenzy's pales in comparison to past frenzy's.
Little Puck Interview
Posted - Apr 14 2025 : 2:26AM
