Digital media and the Internet have made copies nearly free. Because of this it no longer makes sense to base profits on charging for copies. Business models need to change. Alternatives like Pay to Release where only previews are available until the customer pool pledges enough to make copies available do not have piracy as an easy failure mode.
This would never take off because you're capping the profit you can make as well as excluding some recovery of costs for an unsuccessful product.
i.e. If you spend $10 million making a movie, and will only release it when customers pledge $50 million, you're eliminating any chance of becoming a billion dollar blockbuster, and also any chance of being unsuccessful but still recouping a million dolars. Heck you could even become a cult classic 20 years later and make more money back.
Also could you image crew moral if there was constantly a high chance that the thing you've spent a year working on goes completely unreleased?
