- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
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.
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.