Many more people are jumping from one streaming subscription to another, a behavior that could have big implications for the entertainment industry.

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.

Non-paywall link

  • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    TV was already content for rent essentially but with streaming we had more consolidation under 1-3 services initially. Now it’s balkanized again and you have to basically do the work of cobbling together your own faux-cable package like the old days, keeping track of each individual one with its own credentials and costs and constantly shuffling content, all for like $50-$100/mo now.

    Literally the only advantage over old school broadcast packages is now everyone functionally has a TEVO/DVR. But it’s all across a bunch of different apps with different UI’s and such. I mean why would we possibly be ok with that? Watching a show is so much work now comparatively.