Coronavirus has created havoc in the entertainment industry, with production on films and TV shows shut down, and big releases delayed – and pornography is no exception.
As adult film performers and viewers alike find themselves stuck indoors, studios are shutting down, and homebrewed pornography sites like OnlyFans and ManyVids have taken centre stage. It could be fatal traditional porn studios, which were already struggling before the pandemic.
On March 15, the Free Speech Coalition, the trade association that represents the adult entertainment industry in the United States and Canada, called for a shutdown of all adult entertainment productions. The production hold was due to be lifted on March 31, but eight days after the initial announcement, the organisation extended the shutdown indefinitely. “We will not lift this hold until the spread of the virus is under control and state and local governments allow the resumption of non-essential business,” the organisation wrote in an update.
Keith Miller, founder and owner of adult production company Helix Studios says that his company has shuttered production for nearly a month now. “We have a backlog of content that we are trying to stretch until we can produce again,” Miller explains, and adds that Helix Studios is working hard, planning new films for when production restarts.
The UK adult film industry has faced similar closures, with studios abiding by social distancing guidelines outlined by the government. On March 14, UK-based Hussey Productions, which produces content for websites like Brazzers, amongst others, announced that it was stopping all production for two weeks, with the cancellation of shoots likely continuing beyond that period. The studio has not posted any content to its Instagram account since that date.
Justin Santos, founder and owner of UK-based studio Joybear Productions says that his studio was one of the first adult film companies in the UK to close down production. It was a difficult decision, Santos says, that he decided to make at the beginning of March. “I've been running the company for 17 years, and we've never cancelled a shoot,” he says. “We had a shoot in April which we had to cancel, we’ve subsequently cancelled the June shoot and we’re waiting to see if the August shoot can go ahead.”
As with Hollywood production companies, Joybear Pictures has had to alter its release schedule and the release of new films. “We want to make sure that there isn’t a big gap if it turns out that we cannot go into production for a prolonged period of time,” explains Santos, adding that while sales on the business-to-business side of Joybear Pictures has slowed slightly, with TV broadcasters around the world being a bit more tentative in purchasing content, sales of its films to distributors and websites have been strong.
With more people stuck indoors, the free adult video sharing website Pornhub has also seen its traffic spike. The company revealed that traffic to the site in the UK had begun climbing on March 24, the day after prime minister Boris Johnson announced the UK lockdown and the subsequent closure of all pubs, clubs, gyms and restaurants. The latest Pornhub figures show that traffic to the site was up 22.4 per cent on April 10 compared to a regular day at a similar period. Daily uploads to the site have increased by 30 per cent compared to an average day before the pandemic.
The coronavirus has accelerated a long-term trend in the industry – the rise of premium clip sites like OnlyFans and ManyVids. Oliver Carter, a professor of media and cultural theory at Birmingham City University, says that what we imagine the adult film industry to look like, with its sets, producers, directors and cameramen, hasn’t looked like that since the introduction of webcams, broadband internet connections and, more recently, smartphones.
“What’s been most interesting to me is seeing the means of production change from being owned by predominantly white, middle-aged men to being owned by the performers themselves,” explains Carter, who has researched the economics of the adult film industry. “The ones who would receive that one-off payment are now the ones who actually own the intellectual copyright for their own productions because they're shooting it,” he says, adding that with studios, performers typically don’t receive any lasting payments for their contribution.
In 2015, The Economist reported that the number of porn studios in America had shrunk from over 200 to just 20. Technology company MindGeek, which owns a number of free adult video sites like Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube, now also owns a large portion of the major adult film studios, companies and websites, including Brazzers, Twistys, Reality Kings andDigital Playground. “These studios, the ones that haven't been bought by MindGeek, tend to have died off or become quite niche,” says Carter. Performers are now distributing [their own content] via platforms [like OnlyFans and ManyVids] and are making a considerable living out of it.”
Premium clip sites, the most well-known of which is OnlyFans, let people sell often raunchy videos and photos of themselves to subscribers for a fee. They’ve been having their moment thanks to coronavirus. An OnlyFans spokesperson says that the site has welcomed over 140,000 content creators to OnlyFans during the months of February and March. “This is more than five times the amount of creator sign-ups than during the same period in 2019,” the spokesperson says.
Performers take 80 per cent of their earnings through OnlyFans, with the company taking the remaining 20 per cent. Terry Stephens, former chair of the UK Adult Producers Association, says that production companies have been quite aggressive about performers uploading content to OnlyFans because of the conflict of interest. “Some of the companies are saying that they want a percentage of what [the performers] are getting,” he says, with the producers saying that “if it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t be making that kind of money.”
ManyVids, a video hosting and livestreaming adult website, says site saw video uploads increase by 51 per cent in the month of March, while the number of performers signing up increased by 69 per cent. Members, those signing up to view content, also increased by a sizeable amount – 80 per cent. The company says that tips have increased significantly for live shows on the webcam side of the site since March 1, and the number of users performing live is up by 42 per cent.
Geoffrey Celen, who runs the Internet Adult Film Database and adult entertainment review site The Porn Dude says that he has seen a shift in interest to his site’s reviews. “There’s been a massive influx of visitors checking out my reviews of live cam sites since the quarantines and stay-at-home orders began worldwide,” he explains. “In fact, the only sections of my site negatively affected so far are the escort and dating sites.”
“The performers who were already doing well at ‘premiums’ are now doing even better,” says adult industry journalist Gustavo Turner, news editor at trade publication XBIZ. “I wouldn’t say that too many performers are ‘switching over,’ as in ‘starting now,’ but they have definitely switched their full-time attention to self-produced content.”
Adult performer Michelle Thorne, who has been in the British adult film industry for two decades, agrees that she is doing far less studio work than in previous years. She says that she has been making around £1,000 to £2,000 more on OnlyFans now than she normally would, and has gained 100 to 200 new subscribers since the lockdown, taking her to over a thousand subscribers. Thorne notes that over half of them are paying £12.50 a month. “I don’t want to say too much,” she says, “But it’s doing more than enough to keep me comfortable.”
Thorne says she has almost become a sex therapist for her fans and is helping them get through the crisis. She wakes up at 5am to interact with her fans and provides everything from phone calls and voice messages to custom videos, selfies and even a non-adult blog. Some people have messaged me and have said that I should be a key worker,” Thorne says, laughing. “It's not just what you look like. It's you as a person and your personality as well.”
Standing out can be difficult. “Anyone who has tried camming and making clips can tell you that it is actually not an easy job,” says Turner. “Being noticed and succeeding at it is even harder in a crowded grid of people vying for attention,”
Before coronavirus hit, premium clip sites had already been on the rise and, along with Pornhub, were jointly changing the landscape of the adult porn industry. Now, with everyone staying at home, cam sites and clip sites are only going to become more dominant. As Stephens says, “Everyone’s a pornstar now.”
Alex Lee is a writer for WIRED. He tweets from @1AlexL
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK