Fascinating. I don't think I'd call it "streaming fatigue", though.
"22.42% of respondents report spending more time with YouTube's free version." I hope that means YT will have good content again, or maybe a better algorithm soon. I feel like it's been lacking lately, and I've heard others say the same.
About a 1000 respondents (should be enough), self-selected (could be very bad, if the text that lured people to respond even vaguely hinted at cancellations), and they asked whether respondents cancelled a subscription in the last year, but not whether they took a new subscription (⇒ they can’t conclude anything about subscription fatigue, making the header)
I think you can draw a fairly firm conclusion that the space is saturated based on this data (although I agree that the self-selection may be problematic).
It doesn't actually matter if they add a new subscription to replace the cancelled subscription - what matters is that they bothered to cancel a subscription at all.
That implies that for roughly 7 out of 10 people, they are burdened enough by streaming subscription costs to be actively working on reducing that cost. Even if that simply means that they traded one service for another - they worked to keep costs flat, rather than allocate more budget.
I don’t see how you can draw that conclusion. If ⅔ of people replaced a subscription by 2 other, more expensive ones and the other ⅓ took their first subscription, the market grew by 150%.
I’m more than fairly sure that didn’t happen, but the data they provide doesn’t exclude it (even knowing that Netflix lost subscribers doesn’t rule out that scenario)
> they worked to keep costs flat, rather than allocate more budget.
If they did, I wouldn’t call that “subscription fatigue”.
Or they simply watched everything they were interested in watching on the first service so there was no point in keeping the subscription active. It's not like it takes any effort to cancel. They will come back to it later (it's easy at most to reactivate a dormant subscription) when it has accumulated enough new stuff.
That's what I've been doing for the streaming services that aren't bundled with something else I have for reasons other than video streaming (Prime Video because I have Amazon Prime, Hulu because I have Spotify, Peacock Premium because I have XFinity as my ISP, and Paramount+ because I have Walmart+).
For example a couple months before "Avengers: Endgame" was released I realized that I had to see it in theaters. My previous approach for Marvel movies of waiting until they showed up on some non-premium cable channel like FXX meant I was a couple years behind, and I realized there was no way I'd be able to avoid major spoilers while waiting to see Endgame that way. So I got a month of Netflix (they had all the Marvel movies back then) and caught up on Marvel, and a few other things, then cancelled.
Later I got Disney+ for a week (free trial) and caught up on Disney and Pixar animated movies (Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Onward), watched Captain Marvel, rewatched Endgame to see what I'd missed on my bathroom break when I saw it in theaters, and watched the Star Wars trilogy that starts with The Force Awakens, watched Rogue One, and cancelled.
Right now, a couple years later, I'm back on Disney+, because they sent me on offer for a month for $1.99. I've caught up again on Pixar (Soul, Luca, Turning Red), Disney animation (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto), Marvel (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, the Loki series), some Simpsons shorts, and am trying to decide if there is any new Star Wars that interests me. When the month is up I will rewatch Luca once or twice, and then cancel.
I'll be back on Netflix for a month probably next year to watch Lucifer.
I'll also probably at some point do a month of HBO Max for South Park.
same + apple, hbo, and youtube premium because I dont want my kids to watch adds. My personal total weekly streaming is somewhere between 1-3 hours per week and 2-4 hours with kids.
When you pay $100+ per months for XX services and half of what you want to watch is either not available or available but not in your language you cut your losses and go back to torrenting
> Regarding ads, 51.98% will deal with ads to enjoy a lower price point, 18.81% will pay to remove ads, and 19.40% report deleting apps with ads.
Maybe an unpopular take, but I believe ads are more detrimental to one's mind than the extra $5 to get an ad-free plan. You end up paying well more than the $5 in rumination and buying useless stuff. If ads become more forced or have no option to remove in the future for any provider, I'm instantly out and will spend more money on books.
Jerry Mander does an excellent job in his book "Four arguments for the elimination of television" about ads:
> If you accept the existence of advertising, you accept a system designed to persuade and to dominate minds by interfering in people's thinking patterns. You also accept that the system will be used by the sorts of people who like to influence people and are good at it. No person who did not wish to dominate others would choose to use advertising, or choosing it, succeed in it. So the basic nature of advertising and all technologies created to serve it will be consistent with this purpose, will encourage this behaviour in society, and will tend to push social evolution in this direction.
>No person who did not wish to dominate others would choose to use advertising
This sounds like a very weird interpretation of the word "dominate," at best. Emailing someone to introduce yourself, your product, or your services is also "interfering in people's thinking patterns." So is talking to anyone in person or online. So is linking to your book's Amazon page on your profile as a way to "dominate" the minds of people who visit your profile.
We enjoyed a brief golden age before the value extracting minds of the media giants wrapped their heads around the idea of streaming and here we are again with content balkanized across way too many services each wanting their own cut of the pie.
I don't see anything bad or unexpected about that. I was subscribed to 4 streaming services at some point in time. But then I cancelled some, because I didn't find anything to watch at that point in time. I will resubscribe once they have new content.
This still means I still paid on average for 2.3 streaming services for the year, which sounds to me like I appreciate the services and I'm happy to spend money overall on it - and not that I think they are unnecessary and should go away.
It’s a great thing this is happening, because streaming is becoming useless from a technical point of view, thanks to steadily decreasing storage costs. For music it didn’t make any sense for years now, and would be better replaced by IPFS. Not sure if it’s already the case with video, but if not, it soon will be.
Not cancelled any yet, but I did downgrade Netflix to less screens. When my elderly relatives aren't using my Netflix account any more it's getting cancelled. Or if they go ahead with their pay per household plan. Whichever comes first.
YouTube keeps trying to aggrivate me into upgrading to Premium, but at this point I'm not doing it on principal, especially at the outrageous price they expect for family plans. Kids still insist on watching it though despite the constant moans about the ads.
I'd fully switch to Nebula in a heartbeat if a larger percentage of the content producers I watched moved over.
Video content needs its own Spotify moment. The situation is already ridiculous.
21 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.0 ms ] thread"22.42% of respondents report spending more time with YouTube's free version." I hope that means YT will have good content again, or maybe a better algorithm soon. I feel like it's been lacking lately, and I've heard others say the same.
It doesn't actually matter if they add a new subscription to replace the cancelled subscription - what matters is that they bothered to cancel a subscription at all.
That implies that for roughly 7 out of 10 people, they are burdened enough by streaming subscription costs to be actively working on reducing that cost. Even if that simply means that they traded one service for another - they worked to keep costs flat, rather than allocate more budget.
I’m more than fairly sure that didn’t happen, but the data they provide doesn’t exclude it (even knowing that Netflix lost subscribers doesn’t rule out that scenario)
> they worked to keep costs flat, rather than allocate more budget.
If they did, I wouldn’t call that “subscription fatigue”.
That's what I've been doing for the streaming services that aren't bundled with something else I have for reasons other than video streaming (Prime Video because I have Amazon Prime, Hulu because I have Spotify, Peacock Premium because I have XFinity as my ISP, and Paramount+ because I have Walmart+).
For example a couple months before "Avengers: Endgame" was released I realized that I had to see it in theaters. My previous approach for Marvel movies of waiting until they showed up on some non-premium cable channel like FXX meant I was a couple years behind, and I realized there was no way I'd be able to avoid major spoilers while waiting to see Endgame that way. So I got a month of Netflix (they had all the Marvel movies back then) and caught up on Marvel, and a few other things, then cancelled.
Later I got Disney+ for a week (free trial) and caught up on Disney and Pixar animated movies (Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Onward), watched Captain Marvel, rewatched Endgame to see what I'd missed on my bathroom break when I saw it in theaters, and watched the Star Wars trilogy that starts with The Force Awakens, watched Rogue One, and cancelled.
Right now, a couple years later, I'm back on Disney+, because they sent me on offer for a month for $1.99. I've caught up again on Pixar (Soul, Luca, Turning Red), Disney animation (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto), Marvel (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, the Loki series), some Simpsons shorts, and am trying to decide if there is any new Star Wars that interests me. When the month is up I will rewatch Luca once or twice, and then cancel.
I'll be back on Netflix for a month probably next year to watch Lucifer.
I'll also probably at some point do a month of HBO Max for South Park.
Maybe an unpopular take, but I believe ads are more detrimental to one's mind than the extra $5 to get an ad-free plan. You end up paying well more than the $5 in rumination and buying useless stuff. If ads become more forced or have no option to remove in the future for any provider, I'm instantly out and will spend more money on books.
Jerry Mander does an excellent job in his book "Four arguments for the elimination of television" about ads:
> If you accept the existence of advertising, you accept a system designed to persuade and to dominate minds by interfering in people's thinking patterns. You also accept that the system will be used by the sorts of people who like to influence people and are good at it. No person who did not wish to dominate others would choose to use advertising, or choosing it, succeed in it. So the basic nature of advertising and all technologies created to serve it will be consistent with this purpose, will encourage this behaviour in society, and will tend to push social evolution in this direction.
This sounds like a very weird interpretation of the word "dominate," at best. Emailing someone to introduce yourself, your product, or your services is also "interfering in people's thinking patterns." So is talking to anyone in person or online. So is linking to your book's Amazon page on your profile as a way to "dominate" the minds of people who visit your profile.
This still means I still paid on average for 2.3 streaming services for the year, which sounds to me like I appreciate the services and I'm happy to spend money overall on it - and not that I think they are unnecessary and should go away.
Lots of cellphone plans give you 1-year free for X streaming service.
I wonder if a disproportionate of cancelations were due to people not wanting to pay for the steaming service at the end of their free plan.
Does this study take unwanted streaming service trials into account?
YouTube keeps trying to aggrivate me into upgrading to Premium, but at this point I'm not doing it on principal, especially at the outrageous price they expect for family plans. Kids still insist on watching it though despite the constant moans about the ads.
I'd fully switch to Nebula in a heartbeat if a larger percentage of the content producers I watched moved over.
Video content needs its own Spotify moment. The situation is already ridiculous.