After reading this and some comments, what I've gleaned is that the article is bullshit and piracy truly acts as a competitor in 2 areas - service and content. Many shows are exclusive to a particular platform and therefore the platforms do not need to compete in that area. For the service side of things, I think there has been genuine innovation but it has become stagnant in the last few years and they are referring to old bad practices.
It feels like there is active collusion but perhaps it's just a result of a poorly regulated industry which allows for pseudo-monopolies. My hope would be for regulation mandating that all content must have a second provider, i.e. no more exclusive shows. Give me stranger things on Amazon prime as well. This would force each streaming company to complete for users and still allow the creators to get paid appropriately. I don't know if this would end up making streaming services unviable but it's certainly a lot faster and more consumer friendly.
Would love to hear about the potential downside to this proposal.
Some dongles default their volume to 100% (or close to). Android doesn't touch the hardware volume and simply controls the volume of the digital sound it's sending to the DAC I believe.