“Streaming stops feeling infinite”: What subscribers can expect in 2026

Streaming may get a little worse before it gets better.

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[WereCatf]

Streaming may get a little worse before it gets better.

Or, more likely, streaming may get a little worse before it gets even worse.

 

[Darkly]

What if we had, what if we could come up with a way to make piracy less attractive?

Streaming...

So, now we've got them... now we've made paying for content more attractive than piracy... What else could we do?

Constant price rises and rug pulls.

For some reason this doesn't seem popular... Any ideas?

Yaaar!!!

 

[Louis XVI]

Streaming is still infinitely better than cable, much less the four fuzzy broadcast channels of my youth. Having thousands of shows and movies available instantly, without ads, whenever I want, remains the stuff of science fiction.

The decline in quantity of new shows, as well as the rise in prices, is just an inevitable reaction to the unsustainable gold rush at the beginning of the streaming era.

My biggest fear is the gobbling up of more and more media by right wing conglomerates. Paramount swallowing up and destroying CBS news, and now eyeing WB, is the stuff of nightmares. And if they decide to create an “antiwoke” Star Trek, my brain would probably shatter and my soul would shrivel up on the spot.

 

[nash076]

It's going to keep getting worse because we've lost even the pretense of regulation and consumer advocacy.

Build your own media server. Buy physical media.

They had their chance and they blew it.

 

[fkaOld_one]

I’m down to Netflix and Apple, lately dropping Disney and what used to be HBO. Dawned on me that I liked the older stuff and not the newer stuff, so I bought a CD player and a few CDs to fill holes in my CD collection, now watching things on my 27” display. Happy so far.

 

[Daniel]

If the companies wanted to really be responsive to consumers, they would let them design their own packages rather than having to choose options that may or may not include all the services they want. What works against this, of course, is the demand for ever-increasing profits at all times.

Oh yeah, definitely not happening. Remember years ago when all the talk was of a la carte packages where you only paid for exactly what channels and shows you wanted and we were all cheering it on?

 

[eightycc]

Yaaar!!!

Aye, matey.

 

[CatNamedHugs]

Is there anyone who DIDN'T see the future of streaming being, essentially, cable fucking TV but somehow even more expensive?

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

Live sports is the main reason I never "cut the cord" and streaming is ruining that, too, because I now need a Peacock sub, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime to watch certain games. Fortunately, I'm an oldster and remember when sports fandom required reading ink on dead trees and games were time-delayed or only available on OTA, ad-supported audio, aka "radio." So, suck it, Comcast. I'm not paying you twice to watch the Warriors and the Giants on NBC and Peacock. Those teams just lose my support because I only watch games on NBC.

I have Apple TV through the Apple One bundle and I view Amazon Prime Video as a benefit of having Amazon Prime, but I really don't feel like paying any more than that, or sharing my viewing habits with more companies.

 

[Instructables can be Confusable]

And the ISPs and Streaming Services will both argue before any and every regulatory body that they are creating more choice in the marketplace.

Because unlike before when us hostages customers only had the ability to pay one entity for our entertainment at home, now we can chose between TWO hilariously greedy and hostile companies; without the internet one cannot stream but somehow they can argue they compete with each other so we don’t suffer from a lack of a “competitive” marketplace.

Progress!

 

[SunnyD]

Only streaming services I have anymore are plex and paramount. The latter is only because my wife insists on a Walmart+ subscription.

Never ever looking back.

 

[Marvin__]

The key word is monopoly. We all know what happens when there is no competition and no regulation.

Unless or until Congress stops granting unlimited monopoly rights to the creative industries, those monopolies will be abused.

 

[mvmiller12]

My wife subscribes to Netflix and BritBox. We dropped Amazon Prime a couple of years ago because we were not buying enough stuff online to justify the price of it.

Me? I run a private Plex server for me and a few of my relatives/friends where I've ripped and encoded a lot of their physical media and posted it for them (as well as all of my own, of course). Not gonna lie - there's also a lot of "acquired" content there as well.

 

[DarthSlack]

Is there anyone who DIDN'T see the future of streaming being, essentially, cable fucking TV but somehow even more expensive?

Not defending streaming here, but it is a lot cheaper than cable. Maybe people have short memories, but my experience with cable was that it was completely impossible to get the bill under $100/month. And that was with an extremely limited set of channels. With a bit of care and management, it's easy to cut that in half (or more) with streaming.

 

[equine_physics]

So to sum it up....Pay more for shit programming...got it.

I'm down to Apple, Netflix, and Prime and one more may drop. Most new content is lacking in any quality. It's like a fancy pastry with wall paste as filler so I wind up watching older shows that had good writing, plots, and actors. To hold me over I may start diving the depths of archive.org.

In a way, I myself, may wind up going back to what was, reading more and occasionally renting a movie. My own ethics make it hard to sail the digital seas in search of booty, but as time goes on that barrier gets weaker.

Less and less I feel the need to toss money at conglomerates that produce drak (That includes Hollywood that these days seem to come up with a new story line, but instead produces <The Movie Part XX - Kill me, Please>)

 

[SpaceCollector]

Dropped Netflix a week ago, because I don’t watch tv or movies or sports anymore. I am reading, exercising, playing guitar, caring for my garden, studying from books. No need to waste time sitting in front of a tv / computer passively. I don’t have cable and I don’t have any other streaming subscription. I know it’s not for everyone, but I am happy with the results.

 

[DarthSlack]

Live sports is the main reason I never "cut the cord" and streaming is ruining that, too, because I now need a Peacock sub, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime to watch certain games. Fortunately, I'm an oldster and remember when sports fandom required reading ink on dead trees and games were time-delayed or only available on OTA, ad-supported audio, aka "radio." So, suck it, Comcast. I'm not paying you twice to watch the Warriors and the Giants on NBC and Peacock. Those teams just lose my support because I only watch games on NBC.

I have Apple TV through the Apple One bundle and I view Amazon Prime Video as a benefit of having Amazon Prime, but I really don't feel like paying any more than that, or sharing my viewing habits with more companies.

Live sports is the #1 reason I cut the cord. Getting forced by cable companies for content I really didn't want, and was expensive to boot, made it an easy decision. Sports needs to go stand on their own two feet, not by taxing people who don't watch much, if any.

 

[giantbee]

Gabe Newell famously said that the secret was to give a better service than the pirates. Steam has succeeded in this to an extent, admittedly also bolstered by the increase in malware in pirated releases.

Streaming no longer gives a better service than the pirates. It's not just the expense, it's the massive amounts of busywork required to juggle membership, free trials, accounts etc.. It can take longer to check if you have a currently active account on the relevant streaming service, reactivate, make reminders to cancel in a timely manner etc. than to run a torrent search and download a file via a VPN.

I am a very occasional TV watcher, so this admin load was getting intolerable compared to my levels of motivation. Hell, even trying to find something worth watching on Netflix was a source of stress- they don't really curate their content so there's a lot of brainrot and shovelware on there.

Cancelling reduced my stress considerably. I was paying a lot for a service I wasn't enjoying- it felt like an onerous obligation to interact with it. I told myself I'd re-sub for a month if there was something unmissable, but it hasn't been necessary yet. This is pretty telling.

The enshittification of streaming is making it less attractive and piracy more attractive even to people who can afford to pay. A lot of Business Factory types seem to assume that their users are all primarily financially motivated and that you fix the problem with carefully calibrated demand elasticity-aware pricing. However, it's not the whole solution, not even close. The story does touch on this, but it still feels like it's a point lost on those making the decisions.

Providing a service which is exhausting, annoying or unpleasant to use absolutely will irritate all of your customers, rich or poor.

Give a better service than the pirates. If you don't, don't be shocked when the public seek the path of least resistance in increasing numbers and go elsewhere.

 

[gpsxsirus]

I'm realizing that streaming has become too big a part of my life. I don't need to see every popular show or movie. The amount of time a lot of us spend on such entertainment is excessive and a lot of us would be better off doing less of it.

I'm going to focus on spending a lot less time watching TV/movies. More reading, more hobbies, more in-person socializing, more time enjoying nature, more time on productive pursuits. I hope that people on a large scale come to the same conclusion.

 

[khoadley]

And I think to myself, what a miserable world ...

I've never really been a TV viewer, but it's difficult to see "big" TV as anything other than a dying industry, looking to squeeze ever more blood from the ossified. With fragmentation - whether it's between competing services (as present), or between packages within near monopoly suppliers - making getting a broad range of content prohibitively expensive, whilst at the same time the "big" content gets more conservative (in all senses) and repetitive ... well why would future viewers even bother with any of this shit ?

All they're doing is pushing future viewers towards YouTube and TikTok and the next such service and so on, picking and choosing from their own choice of content creators, without the gatekeeping of the streaming services and big TV.

 

[solomonrex]

I don't think this 'shared narrative' presented by the article is quite right. The prices have risen - unless you consider how much free Youtube viewership has risen among the young. And things like Tubi and Amazon's free 'live TV', and short form tiktok type stuff. Netflix keeps rising prices - except they still give it away for free on T-Mobile and similar. And many, many streaming services are cheaper than the 'list prices'. MLB is also free on Tmob, Peacock until recently was regularly sold for $20/yr (not a typo), Paramount has been similarly cheap.

The advertising income is too great not to compete on price, it seems.

So, to the contrary of the 'rising prices' storyline, the majority of streaming hours has stayed free. It's simply that there is still a 'paid cable' tier of 'premium' content being generated at the top, only to move downstream and get licensed out. I've seen Netflix shows pop up on other services, even.

 

[DarthSlack]

You know what? I had downvoted your post but then I took it away because at least you acknowledged that NuTrek is woke. I respect the honesty. And not some kind of "what does woke even mean??" fake gaslighting.

But with that being said the ones that decry "woke" content are complaining because so much modern media feels like propaganda instead of entertainment. If a show has a gay, minority or strong female character that is not what makes it 'woke'. It's when the show feels like propaganda is when I will say a show is woke. And NuTrek has certainly felt like propaganda for the most part. Unlike shows like Severance and Pluribus which feature gay or minority or strong female characters at the forefront but are well crafted enough not to feel like propaganda.

It all comes down to good art vs. bad art. Propaganda by and large is not good art. Not by a longshot. It's simply a means to a political end. It takes real skill to weave the elements you want to include into a movie or show and have it not feel like propaganda. And it seems like a lot of that skill in recent years has been lost. With a few but notable exceptions like Severance, Pluribus, Andor etc....

Honest question: Was Shatner and Nichols kissing in TOS too woke for you?

 

[DarthSlack]

Nope. TOS is one of my top five favorite series of all time. And to compare modern Trek to it is laughable.

Wow. Starting off the New Year with a fizzle I see.

Since you completely missed the point, I'll use small words. That kiss, between a Black woman and a White man, was incredibly offensive to conservatives at the time. It was extremely "woke" as you seem to be using the word. Just like the current series are pushing boundaries on including people who actually exist.

 

[WereCatf]

You know what? I had downvoted your post but then I took it away because at least you acknowledged that NuTrek is woke. I respect the honesty. And not some kind of "what does woke even mean??" fake gaslighting.

But with that being said the ones that decry "woke" content are complaining because so much modern media feels like propaganda instead of entertainment. If a show has a gay, minority or strong female character that is not what makes it 'woke'. It's when the show feels like propaganda is when I will say a show is woke. And NuTrek has certainly felt like propaganda for the most part. Unlike shows like Severance and Pluribus which feature gay or minority or strong female characters at the forefront but are well crafted enough not to feel like propaganda.

It all comes down to good art vs. bad art. Propaganda by and large is not good art. Not by a longshot. It's simply a means to a political end. It takes real skill to weave the elements you want to include into a movie or show and have it not feel like propaganda. And it seems like a lot of that skill in recent years has been lost. With a few but notable exceptions like Severance, Pluribus, Andor etc....

I consider anyone using the term "woke" seriously as a moron. I am yet to be proven wrong.

 

[mfirst]

I am not sure if there is a term for it - at least there should be (like enshitification) in which a company raises the prices enough to continue to make more profit but does not care how many customers they piss off and lose in the meantime (like increasing the sub rate by $5 a month to 10 million customers, but losing 1 million still results in a 9m x $5 profit which is OK for them). At some point that curve will not continue to go up and I wonder when that will be. For me, it is getting close as I am cutting back on any subscriptions - but sometimes it is too hard... I have Apple TV and Apple News - and even with the family sharing, my S.O likes Pandora and her daughter likes Spotify (and has a separate cloud storage for her Verizon phone pictures where as I have ATT) - it is a painful path to break free from.... but we will get there...hopefully

I see the transition from:
Having your own service, to sharing a service, to checking out completely, to going for a walk in the park and no caring about the latest "must see tv"

Right now, if I cant easily find something that I am interested in - then screw-it, there is nothing that I want to watch that badly

I am also getting more concerned about tons of money getting put into buying up stuff that I dont have interest in and nothing that the costs will be pasted on to the customer - like wresting and netflix and the Super Bowl and Youtube..... all while trying to convince us that they are not following the same path as Cable and their zillions of channels of junk that get bundled in with what you really want (I dont recall ever watching ESPN, but I am sure I paid for it)

I agree - things will continue to get worse before they get worse....

 

[elboku]

Streaming was always destined to become cable redux. The sheer number of commercials on TV everywhere is staggering. TV viewing is unpleasant today. I do not have cable but I travel periodically for work. In the hotels, they, of course, offer cable. One time, I scrolled through 60 channels and all of them were showing commercials. All. Of. Them. Shudder.

 

[Matthew J.]

You know what I would like to see... a bright-line separation between production of content and distribution of content. Some good old fashioned regulation, sort of like what we used to have in the financial services industry with the Glass–Steagall act, preventing commercial and investment banking under the same roof.

Companies like Netflix would have to divest their studios, Disney would be prohibited from owning its own "me too" streaming services, Comcast would have to give up its ownership in Philly sports teams, etc etc.

Netflix, Hulu, Fubo, and the other streaming services would be free to negotiate terms for content with whatever studios, sports teams, and other production companies they chose. Popular shows would probably be carried on more than one streaming service because they'd earn more money that way. Exclusivity deals would be prohibited (because that would effectively couple studios with distribution channels again). Streaming services could compete fairly, with bundles of content that they think appeals to their audience. Smaller services could license less content, or cheaper content, at lower monthly rates to subscribers.

Will never happen of course.

 

[DarthSlack]

Those with taste didn't mind it though. Because it was well done. It was good art.

It was weaved into every aspect of the story with no visible seams. It's when you can see the seams as bright as the sun with no regard for the time tested skill of storytelling where it breaks the boundary into propaganda vs. good art.

Bullshit. So explain for us how that kiss is so very, very different from what's going on now. Because all you're doing right now is throwing words around without any thought to their meaning.

 

[Dinosaurius]

Not defending streaming here, but it is a lot cheaper than cable. Maybe people have short memories, but my experience with cable was that it was completely impossible to get the bill under $100/month. And that was with an extremely limited set of channels. With a bit of care and management, it's easy to cut that in half (or more) with streaming.

Yup. I have my YouTube Premium and Prime accounts - We keep Netflix, because wifey is watching a few shows, but we've finally moved to the model of cancelling one streaming platform to start another, when we're tired of the content.

We cut the cable some 20+ years ago, when we couldn't get the cable/satellite bill under $160 a month.
Any time we stay in a hotel or AirBnB with a "full" cable package, we are reminded just how painful watching ad-laden content truly is.

 

[eukiwi]

Streaming is still infinitely better than cable, much less the four fuzzy broadcast channels of my youth. Having thousands of shows and movies available instantly, without ads, whenever I want, remains the stuff of science fiction.

The decline in quantity of new shows, as well as the rise in prices, is just an inevitable reaction to the unsustainable gold rush at the beginning of the streaming era.

My biggest fear is the gobbling up of more and more media by right wing conglomerates. Paramount swallowing up and destroying CBS news, and now eyeing WB, is the stuff of nightmares. And if they decide to create an “antiwoke” Star Trek, my brain would probably shatter and my soul would shrivel up on the spot.

Agreed, but having to maintain eleventy-hundred individual streaming service plans, all of which are slowly getting worse whilst rapidly increasing in cost is not sustainable.

I genuinely did not fly the jolly roger for years and years because I was happy to pay for a good service, but it's getting to the point now where I not only can't be bothered keeping track of them all, but also resent being ripped off.

 

[Louis XVI]

Those with taste didn't mind it though. Because it was well done. It was good art.

It was weaved into every aspect of the story with no visible seams. It's when you can see the seams as bright as the sun with no regard for the time tested skill of storytelling where it breaks the boundary into propaganda vs. good art.

Right, because nothing says subtle and seamless like Star Trek: TOS. It’s hard to imagine anything more subtle than half-black, half-white people trying to kill each other while Kirk gives a monologue about the evils of racism. Or aliens disarming the humans and Klingons while lecturing them about how war is bad. Or a guy bringing out an American flag and saying that the Declaration of Independence is “worship words” that infidels shall not speak, prompting Kirk to look straight into the camera and explain that America’s ideals are for everyone if they are to mean anything to anyone.

TOS was every bit as woke as modern Trek. Trek’s inclusive, liberal politics were outspoken from the very beginning. Stuff like Stacey Abrams showing up as the President of Earth is entirely consistent with what Trek has stood for forever. It’s a big part of what makes it great.

 

[SixDegrees]

I think we'll also see a rise in Just In Time Subscription - waiting until a desired series nears the end of its run, then singing up and - slowly or quickly - binging through it before your 1 month payment expires. Maybe wait until you can pick up two or three shows like that, then cancel and repeat again in a year.

Some services are already catching on to this, with monthly subscriptions being more expensive than an annual sub, but it's still a very significant savings, especially for those with multiple services only showing a limited amount of content specific people are interested in.

 

[truth serum]

I think we'll also see a rise in Just In Time Subscription - waiting until a desired series nears the end of its run, then singing up and - slowly or quickly - binging through it before your 1 month payment expires. Maybe wait until you can pick up two or three shows like that, then cancel and repeat again in a year.

Some services are already catching on to this, with monthly subscriptions being more expensive than an annual sub, but it's still a very significant savings, especially for those with multiple services only showing a limited amount of content specific people are interested in.

A streamer only needs about four good quality series a year to get around this tactic. But it seems like they can't even muster that many quality series worth paying for to make it work.

 

[Tikayeliss]

I think we'll also see a rise in Just In Time Subscription - waiting until a desired series nears the end of its run, then singing up and - slowly or quickly - binging through it before your 1 month payment expires. Maybe wait until you can pick up two or three shows like that, then cancel and repeat again in a year.

Some services are already catching on to this, with monthly subscriptions being more expensive than an annual sub, but it's still a very significant savings, especially for those with multiple services only showing a limited amount of content specific people are interested in.

Funny thing is that the higher monthly just causes folks to:
1. Wait for there to be more content they want to watch at once allowing the math to work out again in their favor
2. Forget and then realize they didn't need the content at all

 

[hillspuck]

Those with taste didn't mind it though. Because it was well done. It was good art.

It was weaved into every aspect of the story with no visible seams. It's when you can see the seams as bright as the sun with no regard for the time tested skill of storytelling where it breaks the boundary into propaganda vs. good art.

You don't see the seams because you grew up in a status quo that was shaped by that "propaganda" of earlier times. You simply bemoan the modern "propaganda" that will set the status quo for people who are growing up now.

You are Archie Bunker, basically.