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.
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Enjoy lifeI 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.
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.
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.
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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
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.
What you mean the Star Trek streaming service with some extra stuff no on cares about?
It’s the Yellowstone Cinematic Universe Channel. And it’s only a matter of time before they force the Star Trek shows to bridge the gap.
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.
Are you outside the US? I thought Netflix got all the Trek series everywhere outside of the US, but this was back when Discovery was first coming out so my info may be out of date. I just download the stuff to avoid jumping through these hoops and avoid ads.
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.
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The 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.
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.
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
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The hard part is saving for all the expensive hard drives. That’s my next step.
You can use the money you saved by cancelling your streaming services. assuming an average of two streaming services thats like £22 a month.
Secondhand electronics shops sell used hard drives dirt cheap.
I wouldn’t trust those drives with any data i want to keep but if it’s just movies that could be redownloaded then who cares?
A couple months down the line you could add redundant drives and then re-downloading isn’t even a consideration any more. dead drive? pull it, replace it, sync… done
With the added benefit of improving your server management skills
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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.
… ⛵️
Laughing in Plex server
Plex is deep in the enshitification process. I’d consider spinning up Jellyfin alongside it so you switch relatively painlessly when you decide that Plex’s bullshit has gone too far.
Even if you never reach that point, it’ll be useful to have a media server that won’t lock you out if you ever lose your Internet connection for an extended period of time
No reason they can’t run alongside each other, in case your concerned about resources or storage.
I agree with you; Plex is completely enshittified. Unfortunately, Jellyfin still lacks apps for some platforms, even though they recently added webOS (old versions included) so the situation is slowly getting better.
You can change the settings in Plex and still access it locally without Internet connection. But yeah Plex is kinda behind the curve on a lot of things, although jellyfin has it’s own issues
Plex requires an account and that account has to connect to an external Plex authentication server every so often. If that token expires and you have no internet, you will be locked out of your Plex.
You can disable auth on your local network. I’ve never experienced any issues with my authentication token expiring without having Internet, and I had my Plex server offline for months last year while I was living in a place that didn’t have Internet. For some reason though it runs noticeably shittier without Internet, it takes a long time for a video file to load.
I couldnt get jelly to see my external drives
Laughs in VLC and HDMI out
So I was thinking about subbing to Netflix again to watch something, and they had already deleted my account (it’s been about a year). So I went to my email to just try and verify that I was trying to login using the correct email address.
While doing this I found a statement from 2018. The price of Premium Netflix then was $13. Now it’s $23 I think. And they cracked down on password sharing so the service isn’t even as good, really.
Every one of these services has raised prices over and over, boiling us frogs in the pot, so it’s no wonder everyone now just subs for a month or two then bounces. It’s smart. The companies here are the stupid ones, chasing the all-mighty “line-go-up” quarterly statement MBA shit when they could have had loyal customers for years and years. I think I had a Netflix account for at least a decade or more (back when it was just mailing DVDs) until they started jumping the price by a few bucks every six months. It’s just not worth it to keep services around waiting for a show or two to come back.
Tbf, Netflix - along with Blockbuster - really was one of the pioneers in offering streaming services, when nobody else would. And it is not their fault that ISPs decided to throttle them, essentially holding their entire business hostage until they ponied up more dough, and now the content providers are doing the same. Also, most of the time they tend to grandfather people into older plans, so whatever the price is they usually (tbf, not always) tend to honor for many years in the future.
I am perpetually a year or less away from cancelling my own subscription b/c of how they continually skirt the line of pushing forward to do things like adding in “advertisements”, but then walking back to make them more bearable before they start losing customers like me in droves. So I am not exactly a full-on “fan” of Netflix, just trying to offer a balanced perspective.
They also did put in the work to make a SUPERB player, plus invested heavily in making apps for physical devices. It was only this year that I finally stopped being able to play Netflix on my 9-year-old TV, and even that has a heavy chance of being more the fault of the device itself (I mostly don’t care b/c my Chromecast still works just fine). Plus I still can do things like e.g. go workout in a gym while watching a pre-downloaded Netflix video without needing to use any of my mobile data, all that needing virtually no setup at all, unlike e.g. piracy that would require paying for a VPN and investigation into what mobile apps are available, plus constant monitoring to see if they remain trustworthy (so many famous examples of apps that got taken over from the inside by a malicious update).
Even so I may still leave it in a year or two, regardless of whether it is their fault or not, b/c I am not sure that I am getting anywhere close to the “value” for the amount that they are charging, anymore:-(. Seeing shows come out like Stranger Things gave me some hope, but then watching that same show enshittify itself immediately for the sake of chasing after profits to the exclusion of all else quickly killed it.
Though in that case I will need to research some alternatives…
Having used Disney and Paramount apps, I’m blown away by how much better the Netflix user experience is.
I have never seen those others but damn, that… does not sound good:-|.
I’ve practically never had a connection issue with Netflix:-). Among the shit-ton of evil companies out there, they are themselves no shining angels but… they don’t seem nearly as bad as the rest of them imho.
I mean their selection keeps getting worse, but the app is responsive and intuitive, which is more than can be said for either of those other ones.
My thoughts about Netflix are the same: I am less than happy about the content - which is beyond their control - but very happy with the apps that they offer that is totally within their control.
I think Blockbuster became a legend of failed business strategies because it didn’t offer streaming when no one else would. They waited until Netflix grabbed all the momentum for streaming to try their own, sad service.
Tbf Netflix barely managed to accomplish it either, at the start, so it must have been an extremely difficult task. Internet speeds, and more importantly reliability, were huge obstacles, but far more so were the labyrinthine rules and regulations of dealing with the content providers, which are still the top obstacles to people enjoying watching television entertainment today.
This video about it basically launched John Olivier’s career in his at-the-time new show Last Week Tonight. If you don’t want to watch it all, fast-forward to 4:08 and look at that graph, showing how Netflix was taken hostage from the ISPs for a few months until they caved and paid the additional premiums demanded (as he called it, a “mob shakedown”) - though you really may enjoy watching the rest of it after that! (warning to any capitalists that watch it: you might not be by the time you get to the end…:-P)
So… I think I disagree with your language: it wasn’t just that they “didn’t” so much as they simply “couldn’t” manage to get it done, maybe b/c they were not willing to be shitty enough? :-P
Netflix […] tend to grandfather people into older plans, so whatever the price is they usually (tbf, not always) tend to honor
Where’s this? I’ve yet to hear of this happening ever.
I am so fucking confused right now. This article tries to talk about it, and even throws out the exact phrase “grandfathered into”, but it fails imho b/c after reading it I am more confused than I was before. Maybe there was a typo in it or something, or maybe the old plan was called “Basic”, instead of the new plan “Standard”… or something, but in any case unless you already had that plan from previously you cannot get onto it now. Nor do I have it, despite not having changed my plan in quite some time…
TLDR: somewhere/somehow/someway things are changing, but whether that means anything or what precisely it means is not clear, plus that itself may change too as time goes on.
Grandfathered Basic is $11.99/month. It used to be $9.99, they raised it last November I want to say? As long as you don’t switch off the plan, you keep it, for now.
You aren’t rich enough to get this…
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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.
[Streaming services raising prices, producing garbage, canceling good shows, losing access to shows, straight-up deleting entire shows for a tax write off.]
“Why have consumers suddenly changed in only three years??? Inexplicable!”
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.
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Yep. They should have settled for passive income and left their content on Netflix.
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.
Americans are getting increasingly impulsive about hitting the cancellation button on their streaming services
GOOD.
Subscribe? You mean torrent?
Sonarr, the TV channel with everything.
ahoy matey
We be consistent on the high seas, yarg.
