Stream Fatigue? Americans Spent 23% Less on Streaming Services in 2024, Study Finds
The average U.S. citizen spent $42.38 on streaming services each month in 2024, down 23% from last year, a new report found
Homelessness spiked 18% last year. Inflation is kicking up again in certain sectors in anticipation of Trump's tariffs. And yet...
The Suits: The people just have fatigue! They're just busy spending their money on "short term purchases like groceries", we've got to find a way to get them to spend the money on this instead!
Soon: "Millennials are killing the streaming industry!"
I've started spending 100% less on streaming services this year.
When all the content I could possibly want was on Netflix, I happily and without reservation paid for it. I would have even paid more, (and did, when 4k streaming became a thing) and was generally happy with what they offered.
But of course, we all know that their content licenses were not renewed, and then they engaged in a non-stop campaign of cancelling any show I found remotely interesting, and that was basically the end of a 15-year subscription history with them.
And it's not like any of the replacement services were better: they all had little bits and pieces of shit I might want, but they had multiple tiers, mostly with ads, and I just couldn't be fucked to figure out which service had what content - and, worse, sometimes they had the content but not EVERYTHING: who the hell wants to watch a show on a service that has season 2,4,5 and 6, but not 1,3 or 7?
You would have to subscribe to several services to get everything, and suddenly they were looking worse than the cable subscription they were supposedly replacing, but being better than,
Basically, they made a product worse than me doing it myself, and so, after a very long stretch of paying for shit, I went back to uh, not paying for it.
Spotify is in that list too: I realized I was a grumpy old man and that for my purposes I could just buy and rip second-hand CDs and build a library that didn't cost me money every month, and well, if I bought a couple of CDs a year, it was STILL in my favor by a huge margin. (And, as a bonus, I wasn't contributing to certain poor choices of podcast funding they had made.)
The season thing drove me up the wall. How did any, and I mean any TV executive think that was a good deal? Worse is how are people still paying for it? Oh yeah, I love watching a show, seeing a big cliffhanger, then speeding forward 2 seasons skipping everything in between. Why the hell would anyone want that?
Or with Netflix, you're exactly right. I also love falling in head first into a show, then having it completely changed or outright cancelled after the first or second season. Netflix made a money printer with the Witcher. Everyone I knew was watching it, nerds, parents, random friends, anyone I asked they were watching it. Then they just decided "Nah, fuck the money, we'll just completely change the show to the point where even the main actor leaves". What the actual hell are they thinking? Why do people still give them money?!
How did any, and I mean any TV executive think that was a good deal?
I doubt they thought about it and/or care. It's probably a case where they don't have the rights to offer the missing seasons, and threw what they had up anyways because fuck it, someone will watch it.
Or with Netflix, you’re exactly right.
I don't honestly expect Netflix to survive long-term, since there's absolutely no reason to subscribe to them anymore.
They don't have any shows that I could name that I'd be interested in, and it's damn internet meme that they're going to kill everything after a season or two.
It's utter incompetence by the c-levels, and has pretty much put them on a trajectory to eventually just glide into irrelevance.
Spotify is in that list too
Another issue that probably doesn't affect US residents much, is that a decent amount of content isn't available in all regions. So even if I were to switch to a streaming service, it would mean I'm effectively getting an inferior product because some of my favourite albums are missing due to idiotic regional licensing. Just like with TV streaming, for that matter.
when i finally dumped cable (which i had pretty much just for broadcast reception and one cable network), i figured i'd sub to services instead. i could basically get all the major ones and still have money left over.
or so i foolishly thought.
it's been like a year and a half...
number of months paid for streaming services: zero
my greedy landlord got all that 'saved' money instead.
I think this is the primary cause, and is likely to be an overall revenue increase for the streaming companies since they get additional ad recenue based on time watched instead of all coming from a flat subscription fee.
The decline in streaming spending comes as ad-supported streaming hit a record high in 2024. A record 43% of streaming subscriptions were ad-supported by the end of Q3, according to Antenna, a market research firm. And between July and September, 56% of new streaming subscriptions were ad-supported — indicating Americans are opting for the cheaper option, even if they have to sit through a few commercials.
Fuck steaming services for jamming ads back into the experience and raising prices on those of us that don't want them.
The rampant advertising should not be underestimated. Why are we paying for the privilege to be advertised at in every inch of our homes in every hour of our lives? It's not just streaming services, either, they're jamming this kind of crap in consumer products like kitchen gadgets. When it infects your whole life, you start to get pretty jaded about it all.
Literally dropped everything but Netflix and back to pirating.
Fuck stratification.
It's all too fragmented now. I don't want to commit to any of it. Each platform is 90% garbage and 10% good. You basically have to pay for ten services now just to have a wealth of good content available. It's easier to just fill my thumb drive up with the content I want.
I'll tell you which service has the best content! It runs in a docker container in my homelab...
Find it hard to believe half of Americans still have cable
For a LOT of them it's just inertia and a handful of comfort channels. This is the way it is with my parents. They spend 90% of the time watching streaming, BUT, what if they needed to watch something on cable! So the subscription keeps going, even though it's long outlived practicality.
dropped netflix this month for the first time in, god, like 17 years. Just not watching it and all the trash behavior they engage in. When a few services finally crash and burn and get consolidated and everyone stops piecemealing out the rights, maybe I’ll come back. Til then, ahoy.
The apps used to work flawlessly.
Now the apps spend months at a time failing to work (Disney Plus!) or whining about how many devices my family has (Netflix!).
The app bugginess is presumably because they need to add DRM to ensure I'm not stealing their precious content while voluntarily paying them to license it. This has lead to my refreshing my interest in DRM free ownable media. For me that's DVDs. For most people piracy is the best answer.
I use the device limits as a reminder to cancel the service until the next thing I'm really interested in comes out.
It's not fatigue. It's that a bunch of deeply stupid assholes make the decisions at the major streaming platforms.
I would gladly pay cable prices for premier high quality on demand television and movies without ads. That was the deal two years ago, and I gladly paid for most of it.
But now I'm collecting DVDs until, presumably, a piracy service reaches a maturity level where I can't tell it's illegal and happily pay for it, instead.
Good ol piracy. I let a few price bumps slide, but when I started losing features AND paying more money. Nah, I’m just gonna get my hat and my flag 🏴☠️
I started piracy, but I also watched less pirated content because 2024 seemed pretty fucking dull with content. Too much reality TV bullshit made it's way to the streaming platforms.
