Many more people are jumping from one streaming subscription to another, a behavior that could have big implications for the entertainment industry.
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Americans are getting increasingly impulsive about hitting the cancellation button on their streaming services. More than 29 million — about a quarter of domestic paying streaming subscribers — have canceled three or more services over the last two years, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. And the numbers are rising fast.
The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider, as well as the early days of the so-called streaming wars, when people kept adding services without culling or jumping around.
Among these nomadic subscribers, some are taking advantage of how easy it is, with a monthly contract and simple click of a button, to hopscotch from one service to the next. Indeed, these users can be fickle — a third of them resubscribe to the canceled service within six months, according to Antenna’s research.
“In three years, this went from a very niche behavior to an absolute mainstream part of the market,” said Jonathan Carson, the chief executive of Antenna.
There are months, I don’t even watch anything. I’ll subscribe when the need arises. When the need subsides because I’m busy. I’ll cancel. The idea that I’ll just pay on autopilot went away when they raised prices and made it impossible for me to share the subscription.
Just the fact that the author here is using the word “impulsive” in conjunction with canceling services tells me that this is just guilt based propaganda trying to put a negative spin on this. No thanks, you can fuck off.
Americans new habit: Being poor.
Millennials new impulse buy: food and rent.
Wasting money on impulsive grocery purchases like vegetables and bread when they could be subscribing to every streaming service.
I’m going back to buying DVDs.
That’s too much effort. Easier to just not watch anything at all.
In three years, this went from a very niche behavior to an absolute mainstream part of the market
It’s because of the fracturing of the marketplace. For a while there were only a few major Film/TV streaming services. Netflix and Hulu, then HBO and Amazon, and a handful of niche or genre platforms.
Then around the pandemic time, every network and their mother decided to pull their licensing to start their own streaming platform or several. The platforms all cost as much or more as before, but you need more of them to watch the different IP you are interested in.What the studios don’t realize (or won’t publicly admit) is that instead of replacing cable TV, they have effectively recreated the video rental industry.
Cancelled all services a couple months ago that offer an ad+sub tier. I’m ok with ads for free or sub, but mix them and that kind of greediness like cable TV i can’t abide. It’s given me more time for other hobbies I’d rather be doing anyways.
All the smart people subscribing to things they could be getting for free.
The subtle corporate dick sucking of using “impulsive” against the cancellation of the thing and not the impulsive purchase of the thing.
The NY times can go fuck itself.
It could fit.
Each subscription is carefully planned based on what shows the family wants to watch.
Each cancellation is on a whim. “Hey, the monthly bills are too high. Are we done with [service]?”
It doesn’t make any sense for somebody that “carefully plans” their subscription to be surprised by the monthly bills and “on a whim” cancel.
Impulse buyers are the ones that get surprises at the end of the month.
Judging by comments here, plenty of people carefully plan subscribing for one month only: so they subscribe and immediate cancel, all planned, and then have a month to see the bunch of series and movies exclusive to that provider that they planned to see.
My favorite/least favorite instance of this kind of oh-so-subtle dysphemism is when CNN (I think) ran a piece about some marketing suit’s complaint that millennials are “brand promiscuous”, for basically the same reason as we’re seeing with these streaming services applied to other products. This sort of thing is what led to r/DeathByMillennial.
Subscribe? You mean torrent?
Sonarr, the TV channel with everything.
Viewers didn’t stick with a single provider in the cable era.
They were stuck with a single provider.
This is exactly what I came to mention. It’s not like you had a choice. The cable mafia only allowed one provider per area.
And you couldn’t even pick and choose what channels you wanted. Basic cable meant you had to pay to subsidize 100+ channels you were never going to watch. I’ve been cable free for almost 10 years and it was awesome until all the networks started taking their balls and going home by starting their own streaming services. That left less and less content that I actually wanted to see on any single service. The last straw was when they all jacked their prices way up and added commercials.
My issue is that none of these streaming services have a backlog of content large enough to be worth it, and they only add one good show every few years. I can just pirate the one good thing they put out, and then I don’t have to pay for the heaps of trash they’ve shatted onto their streaming service.
I skip the subscribe part. Just watch and repeat.
It’s the only practical option. Unless we get cable like packages (which I wouldn’t be surprised to see soon), nobody wants to pay for some 10+ subscriptions for 1-2 shows on each platform. But if you cycle a couple subscriptions every few months, it’s the same (cheaper) cost year round, but you get all the content you want.
Having described it, I think that’s probably why we’re seeing more and more shows returning back to weekly releases - that model keeps the subscribers on the hook for longer. We can always just wait till it’s done, of course, but there’s a number of factors that can pressure viewers into remaining subscribed.
It’s the only practical option.
Free streaming sites are way more practical.
You don’t want to pay $150/month for 10 different streaming services with one show you want to watch each??
I wholly agree but I think the weekly model is about more than money. It gives fans time to talk about each episode and have fun conversations speculating on what comes next. I much prefer that. When 10 episodes are released at once, people binge it over a weekend and the buzz is gone a month later. Single episode releases make for a ton of free word-of-mouth marketing
The Hulu/Disney/ESPN bundle already exists as a prototype, but I’m sure it’ll go much further from there
It just makes economic sense.
The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider, as well as the early days of the so-called streaming wars, when people kept adding services without culling or jumping around.
Yeah, turns out when the monopolies are eliminated, people get more competition and a better deal on the consumer end. It’s why I’ll never understand people who say streaming services became as bad as cable.
One option for slowing the churn, executives think, is to bring back some element of the cable bundle by selling streaming services together. Executives believe consumers would be less inclined to cancel a package that offered services from multiple companies.
No, I’m less likely to cancel a service that’s worth what you charge for it. Be happy you got one month out of me, and if you want more, offer me more value. Putting serialized shows out week by week doesn’t do it for me either, because I’m just going to wait until the season is done to start watching it anyway.
Price sensitivity is also a factor. Americans with a streaming subscription are spending an average of $61 a month for four services, an increase from $48 a year ago, according to a new study by Deloitte. The increase was due to higher prices, not additional services. Nearly half the people surveyed said they would cancel their favorite streaming service if monthly prices went up another $5, the study said.
Mystery solved.
Yeah, turns out when the monopolies are eliminated, people get more competition and a better deal on the consumer end. It’s why I’ll never understand people who say streaming services became as bad as cable.
I’d argue that streaming is in such a bad place right now because each streaming service has a monopoly on their own content. Sure, you could argue that studios “compete” with each other on the content they produce, but I’d argue that cable companies were a different layer of the stack entirely. Cable companies all offered the same channels and the same content, and in areas where they did overlap, competition to offer the best delivery of those channels was great. What made cable bad was that there was little incentive for companies to geographically compete. In the era of streaming, companies have little incentive to allow their content to compete across platforms.
If you ask me, every streaming platform should be broken up from their production parents, so that streaming companies can compete on what they offer, and how they deliver it. There is no incentive for the platforms themselves to compete with each other. It’s all about how hard the services can enshittify before people stop watching the content they have a monopoly on.
Cable companies still did the same practice too though, and even the ones that weren’t cable providers still negotiated with the providers that if you got channel A in this tier of service, you must also get channel B, and then Disney brings in a certain amount of money per channel in a given bundle every month. No matter how you slice it, even with the problems above, what we’ve got now is better.
This is why Uncle Sam made it illegal for movie studios to own their own movie theaters 100 years ago.
Movie theaters are a great analogy to what streaming services should be
The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider,
What a stupidly obsequious statement. You didn’t change providers because you couldn’t. It wasn’t until satellite TV took off in the late 90s that people started having options for more than one subscription TV provider.
And now these financial geniuses are talking about bundling, when the whole reason this “problem” exists in the first place is because all of them yanked their content off Netflix to start their own streaming channels in the belief that they could be as profitable and as successful. Maybe they should try listening to what consumers want?
I prefer the weekly release schedule of shows. It’s something to look forward to and something to talk about week to week. A lot of people don’t want to hear spoilers either. Releasing all at once leads to that.
I do think there are those who would subscribe instantly instead of waiting for all shows to be released. Not everybody, but enough of them to stay for two to three months instead of just one and done.
I really don’t understand why streaming business are so surprised. They are providing television for rent and users are renting it plain and simple.They seem to think they are entitled to lengthy subscriptions from users when in reality they aren’t providing a service that’s even stable or worth it.
I would be happy to keep subscribing for a reasonable price. But I’m starting to trim the fat as they continue to price gouge.
You’re probably being
theoreticalrhetorical, but they’re definitely not surprised. Any actual confusion as to why an article like this can be cleared up when you consider the author isn’t really talking to us. Try reading it as if it’s a business brief, talking about us as a ‘problem’ that must be addressed. That ‘problem’ is we users are getting more value from the current model than was calculated by corporate.Soon there will be another article (also addressing the room as if we’re not part of the discussion) detailing how corporate managed to “fix” it, and the revenue increases it brings. The other companies will follow suit to thunderous applause
Exactly. I want to watch 1 show and when I’m done I’m cancelling. I’m looking at your paramount plus.
Paramount+ is especially bad. Tiny selection, mostly shit, costs as much as the other services.
My wife wanted to watch the Grammys and when we saw it was on Paramount Plus we got it for 1 day. Afterwards I bought a 25 dollar over the air antennae so we can watch live CBS on the local affiliate for the once per year when we want to watch live TV. Isn’t worth it pretty much ever
they thought star trek would carry it… when that didn’t work, they shopped some of those titles around to play elsewhere and don’t even have their entire flagship franchise available anymore.
And the only new Star Trek show in the pipeline? A YA Starfleet Academy show starring Commandant Tilly.
Paramount+ ate the children’s entertainment app Noggin, which was primarily a streaming media and games app for the Nickelodeon crowd. It was commercial free, highly curated, and generally an exciting thing for the kids to open up and use to discover stuff like STEM games that were actually fun. Enshittification merged Noggin into Paramount, removed the recommendation algorithm geared towards kids, and shut down the Noggin app. Now Paramount is the only option and it’s horrible.
Agreed. I have that shit for free because of where I work and have yet to watch a single thing on it. I mean there’s things I would’ve watched ideally, but my tastes have changed where I don’t want to revisit some things. Ah yes, they have the fucking Golf Masters on there. Paramount Plus’ selection looks like the home of all of those mundane shows you’d commonly find on cable TV. The ones you skip a lot of the time. They’re all here in one package that almost nobody wants unless they want to tap into nostalgia for some of the other ones, like the Nick shows.
And no Anime at all either.
What you mean the Star Trek streaming service with some extra stuff no on cares about?
Originally we went to get to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race but it doesn’t have the current season even though its the main attraction. Then when I saw that some Star Trek wasn’t on it we canceled within a week.
Users: Fine if you want me to pay a monthly fee I’ll only pay 3 months of the year.
Streaming services: ShookThe Netflix model was only ever really sustainable as long as there was only one or two providers. As long as there was only Netflix people were quite happy to just stay with the subscription because all of the content was on one convenient platform.
If I want to watch popular shows and how I have to subscribe to five or six services. Why would I do that if they are all still going to be there in a couple of months.
if they are all still going to be there in a couple of months.
That’s the beauty of Netflix. They won’t.
They usually keep new shows at least for a year. And I suppose after that there’s no possible way of watching that content ever again, it’s lost into oblivion and certainly not available to download from a large number of locations.
Oh well
The Netflix model was only ever really sustainable as long as there was only one or two providers
The netflix model of streaming for cash was sustainable. The practice of gouging to where people will churn, that’s more widespread and an expected result.
The moment that I wasn’t allowed to do with my 6 accounts what I want to do, it was done for me.
