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

Streaming may get a little worse before it gets better.

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[iquanyin]

Live sports is definitely an issue. Some, like yourself, want to watch it. Others, like me, don't. But they always try to get folks that don't watch it to subsidize those that do. For example Amazon has been doing football - they have been advertising "Thursday night football" to me even though I have the no ads tier. But I don't want my subscription fees to go to live sports. Yet it does. That was one of the things I had hoped (naively) that would be better on streaming - that the folks who wanted sports could absorb the costs of it and those that don't could avoid the cost. But it is getting more and more like cable where, for example, if you want channel X, you can only get it in a bundle with channels z,a,b,c, and d that basically nobody watches but you have to subsidize them if you want x. I saw an article just the other day that Netflix was going to get into more live sports over the next few years. Great! There goes some of my Netflix subscription fee towards sports when I want it to go to a strong back catalog instead.

same. why is it that sports needs to be subsidized by everyone? i don't get it. is it because they pay pro atheletes too much money?

 

[truth serum]

same. why is it that sports needs to be subsidized by everyone? i don't get it. is it because they pay pro atheletes too much money?

Its because Live sports viewing brings in the most money. For example I have Paramount and Peacock solely for watching NFL and for no other reason. I cancel every year after the season ends.

I had originally subscribed to CBS All Access way back before it became Paramount Plus because of Star Trek but then NuTrek became so godawful I dropped the service for years until I started re-subbing strictly for NFL.

 

[effgee]

… People who are inclined to go to all the trouble of piracy are lost as customers. … Netflix has probably 325M subscribers by now and they still seem to be growing. Plus there's a gaggle of competitors, some of which are succeeding as well. So there's a huge global market for non-pirating customers. …

325,000,000…? That’s chump change, literal “found-a-nickel-between-the-couch-cushions” numbers.

… Piracy reached a low in 2020, with 130,000,000,000 website visits. But by 2024 that number had risen to 216,000,000,000. … (source)

On average, people watch just about the same amount of media today as they did pre-pandemic; roughly 10% more in the US, about 10% less in the EU comparing 2019 and 2025. Yet during that same time period piracy numbers surged by 66%.

Single-click, click-to-watch sites may be somewhat more prevalent today than they were five, six years ago, but that alone does not explain this surge. Which pretty much leaves the ole “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin <mediaoligarch>, the more star systems <subscribers> will slip through your fingers.”

People are simply growing tired of getting less and less content for more and more money. Some cut back on their media consumption altogether, whereas others resort to (largely) extra-legal means.

 

[Louis XVI]

i think the biggest issue with cable was the cable company. plutoTV is basically cable with less ads and no spectrum/concast involved

There were lots of issues with cable that are solved with streaming, even in its current state:

• The cable companies sucked, as you said.
• Shows aired at specific times, and were filled with commercials.
• Getting around the point above involved using clunky Tivos or, worse, cable company DVRs.
• Much smaller selection of shows than any streaming service.
• If you wanted any of the higher tiers of channels, cable was more expensive than streamers.

 

[BBennett]

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.

Well, the 'visible seams' part was pretty clever...
See, the seams are really there, but you have to be 'unwoke' (asleep?) in order to see them - and then it ruins everything in the story!

It's obvious man, I researched it.
/s (I guess)

 

[chucklepie2]

When you pay to watch enrichment tv shows and films what you don't want is hundreds of millions of your money spent on fucking live sport and podcasts. Especially American, where the likes of 'football' is the equivalent of ESPN the Ocho plate spinning to the rest of the world

 

[DarthSlack]

For now.
Anyone who has the title Darth should understand that the deal can be altered.

Wait.....

Doesn't that mean I get to alter the deal? Did I get all Darthed up for nothing?

 

[squiggit]

It would have been an entirely valid argument to make years ago, mind. It's easy to assume that it's still challenging to sail the seven seas or set up a media server, especially if you're unaware of the many excellent free software projects that exist primarily to make these common requirements easy to satisfy. I suspect that it's easy to assume that you "understand this stuff" but have extremely out of date assumptions.

It's possible that this is also informing some of the choices that the streamers make.

I used to work for a specialist strategic consultancy that provided advice at a c-suite level to major media organisations. Most of our clients and a fair few of our consultants ran completely on stale assumption- several times I had to point out that advice given (sometimes at startling cost) was, to be generous, somewhat orthogonal to the actualité. The mechanic was very similar.

The question becomes whether the streamers catch on before the public does. Here be dragons.

You definitely sound like you worked in a consulting firm yeah.

 

[markgo]

No. You see the seams and you like the seams. There is a difference.

I can guarantee you 99.99% of people that grew up watching old school Trek did not think to themselves "oh this is so strong and brave." They liked the story, the lore and the characters and being strong and brave barely came into top of peoples minds if at all.

You think thinking "this is strong and brave" is a good thing. But most people think having those kinds of thoughts come to top of mind instead of the worldbuilding, plot, characters and story is a bad thing. Because it breaks the immersion.

You have different priorities, and that's ok. But its not what the market wants. Because if it did people would be making original ip's with the kinds of quailities you prefer baked in instead of piggybacking on legacy properties that have already existed and gained popularity on a different set of metrics other than inherently obvious and worldbreaking propaganda-like qualities. And no, you don't have to wonder or imply because yeah I'm bitter about it.

It's like clockwork where something will gain popularity on its own. Especially a new show. Then in the second or third season the propaganda starts getting pushed to the forefront and the show gets cancelled. Its not rocket science. The market does not want it. But I have a sneaky feeling the people that are doing it think 'so be it' if these things die. Because the propaganda is more important than the ip itself. More important than the company, more important than the medium its being put in. And trying to convince them otherwise is a one thousand percent lost cause.

Trust me I get it. We just have different priorities.

Please provide any concrete evidence that show runners are intentionally tanking quality and popularity (and the concomitant financial success) for “propaganda”.

Or even define “propaganda”. Because I see no centralized message being chosen and disseminated. That’s a right-wing media trick.

 

[squiggit]

The whole premise is somewhat telling, isn't it? Like even if we take for granted that whichever show is being criticized is genuinely bad, it's pretty weird take a badly written character played by a black actor and try to draw a through line between the actor's skin tone and the show's direction.

... Most of the complaints about these shows aren't even about character acting but about overarching plots and themes have have nothing to do with any of that other stuff! Where's the logic and rationality here?

Lots of people ITT pretending they don't understand the concept of breaking immersion. When they absolutely understand it. Its dishonest. The truth (no pun intended) is they simply do not care because its not their top priority.

Speaking of propaganda. Are you really like, trying to imagine up a conspiracy to promote bad television into reality just so you don't have to introspect at all or deal with the idea that people just like that one thing you don't or that disliking a show is just a thing people can do and not part of some objective moral truth you've aligned yourself with?

 

[cfenton]

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.

I do wonder how possible this is for video. There's a lot of friction for game piracy for at least three reasons. First, because modern games often require a lot of patching, which is difficult to keep up with. Second, because games are executable files and therefore much easier to infect with malware. Third, DRM like Denuvo is often reasonably effective, even if only for a short time. Steam removes all of this friction, which makes it appealing.

Almost none of that friction exists for video. The movie or TV show doesn't get patched or changed. Malware is a potential concern, but much less so since it's a lot harder to disguise malware as a video file. Video DRM is a joke, and even if it wasn't piracy groups could just screen record. So what friction is Netflix removing that isn't also removed with a Radarr/Sonarr and Plex setup? Other than the initial set up, I can't think of much. In fact, the Radarr/Sonarr and Plex setup is easier to use day to day because it has everything I want to watch in one place. I don't see how any of the streaming services can improve on that.

 

[markgo]

Its because Live sports viewing brings in the most money. For example I have Paramount and Peacock solely for watching NFL and for no other reason. I cancel every year after the season ends.

I had originally subscribed to CBS All Access way back before it became Paramount Plus because of Star Trek but then NuTrek became so godawful I dropped the service for years until I started re-subbing strictly for NFL.

The question was why non-sports fans should subsidize your sports viewing, not whether it’s valuable to people like you who will pay specifically for sports.

 

[nononsense]

Apple has original scripted shows that show up near the top of the ratings despite having a mere fraction of the subscriber base of the top players. Its because their original shows are good.

And as far as being "un-woke" goes it’s not really what I'm looking for personally. More like non-woke would be closer. Since I'm not really looking for the Landman "dadcore" type of shows either as they aren't really my bag even though they seem to be pretty popular in some circles. I didn't even make it 20 minutes into Top Gun Maverick. It’s all too heavy handed and cringe to me. These types of "let’s make the opposite of woke" types of shows don't really work for me either and feel more like two sides of the same coin.

You keep talking about seams and propaganda and woke and you’re just overthinking it or trying to obscure the point to the point of not even making a point.

What you’re talking about is well-written, entertaining programming versus crap writing and crap programming. It has nothing to do with all that other stuff. You like shows that are good and you don’t like shows that are bad. (In your opinion). Unsurprisingly, this is the same criteria we all use for the shows we like or don’t like.

The problem with using words like woke and propaganda is that they are so subjective they have no meaning. It’s so much more productive to talk about the quality of a show. Is the dialogue believable, the narrative engaging, the characters fully formed, the writing original? Just saying you don’t like a show because it’s too woke or anti-woke or seamless or propaganda gets us exactly nowhere. Detailing why you like or dislike a show is better done by discussing its technical virtues and faults. Judging a show or literature on its level of ‘wokeness’ is moronic. Ditto on whether you consider it propaganda.

 

[Marlor_AU]

Streaming is still better than cable/satellite TV because it's so easy to subscribe for a month, watch the seasons you came for, then cancel.

These days, I always subscribe and cancel in one operation. That way, there's no need to remember to cancel before the end of the month. I just pay for the month and the subscription stays active for that duration. Then, if I still have more to watch after the month is up, I just repeat for another month.

The more streaming services increase their prices, the greater the incentive to subscribe on a monthly basis instead of leaving the service active. The penalty for the convenience of idle streaming services increases.

 

[Dinosaurius]

Lots of people ITT pretending they don't understand the concept of breaking immersion. When they absolutely understand it. Its dishonest. The truth (no pun intended) is they simply do not care because its not their top priority.

This is absolutely, 100% true. It is probably close to unity, the chance that we've all seen something occurring or being said that we've known was wrong, but said/did nothing, because we just could not be arsed to do so.
"I'm not racist/sexist/hateful and I know that's wrong but... <reasons>"

Heck, I can remember more than a few episodes of Babylon 5 where I knew they were pushing current events and their versions of morality in our faces and it didn't bother me because - I just just a heck of a good episode. (Don't get me wrong: There were more than a few that I knew exactly the same was going on and gave a mental thumbs up for them poking The Man in the eye for doing so, as well)

People have to be careful of being victims of their own virtue signaling - it is often the politicians' single greatest mistake: Thinking that their screaming, loving, adoring base represents the majority of the public, when that is no where close to the truth: Whether you are MAGA or a tree-hugger, realizing that the majority isn't screaming your name in love of your ideas does not mean those who aren't are arguing against your beliefs: They just don't care, one way or another.

Your average citizen - of any country - doesn't hate the trees, but doesn't want to see them all disappear, either - but they sure as hell aren't going to give up a Saturday afternoon to protest.
Your average citizen wouldn't want to see a cow tortured to death, but again: They're not giving up their Sunday morning to picket in front of a packing plant.

So on and so forth: It's not that the average person is cruel or heartless - but their priorities are much, much more personal-centric.

What you said: "The truth (no pun intended) is they simply do not care because its not their top priority." is absolutely, 100% bang-on accurate. That's not good, that's not evil: That is just the human condition.

 

[/or\]

I have my Tablo set to record newer shows I want to watch, It's generally pretty good. I don't subscribe much. Tablo needs to uprade their servers.. I did get Hulu for 2.99/mo for 6 months last sale they had so I can catch up on some Fx shows but my phone will remind me to cancel it before it renews at 17.99 for the first time.

 

[F12]

" opting for cheaper or free alternatives, such as FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channels with linear programming."

I think you meant to say torrenting. FTFY.

 

[Frank C.]

Strictly looking at writing and content. Look at last nights reaction to the last episode of Stranger Things. People are complaining of a crap ending, no resolution, loose ends everywhere and generally aloof writing. About that aloof writing, there’s a lot of Internet outrage right now about Netflix and others, having been accused of telling writers these days to write to an audience distracted by their phones, only paying partial attention to the TV. You can literally miss many minutes and still get the gist of storyline.

 

[that guy strife]

Imo its fine in a strictly fantasy setting but too many shows try to use it as a shield for bad writing.

For example they made it work in S1 of The Witcher but not after that. Now the writing is atrocious and every village looks like Los Angeles. Then in Rings of Power they did themselves a disservice by surrounding the minority characters with bad writing. Like Durin's dwarven wife was actually one of the better characters in the entire show but then was overshadowed by being in such an overall poorly written show. And of course public discourse will never have enough nuance to truly articulate and understand why the show was bad. Which was the poor writing and not the minority characters.

Which all circles back to the same kinds of problems you get which such thigs. You get creators that are more concerned with propaganda than quality storytelling and the propagandists always seem to end up taking over and running the entire thing into the ground. Mainly because quality was never the #1 priority in the first place.

yeaaah different ethnicities is not why the Witcher show tanked lol. Can't speak to Ring of Powers, haven't bothered.

You're missing the point, and your use of the word ''propaganda'' for stuff that includes minorities ... well, all the next things I can think of are pretty negative, so I'm gonna stop here.

do everyone a favor, stop spouting non-sense, don't bother expressing yourself anymore - it just makes you look and feel like an absolute idiot.

You need to take a few years and learn before your commentary has any validity.

 

[richten]

Executives: "You know that business that we replaced because people were tired of it and we could offer a better product? What if we made our product more like the one we replaced?"

 

[dark.jade]

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 am so curious what elements this poster considers "woke" or "propaganda". It'd be interesting to see an honest set of dot-points.

Is it trans people (like me) existing as characters? Shows where non-white people, queer people, and women are treated as fully fledged characters with their own opinions, and are treated as equals?

As for propaganda... If you're atheist, pacifist, sex positive, and queer, almost everything coming from the US is blatant propaganda for their religion, their military-industrial complex (cops and robbers style narratives like marvel), the way they'll happily show someone being punched, but won't dare show any form of intimacy, and the way they still put straight relationships and cis people on a pedestal as "the norm". You just have different biases.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

Prime's commercials are so invasive, that I don't even both with their content anymore. And I'm not paying the $3 kicker to get back to the service I had before.

I guess it depends on what you watch. I just watched Hitting the Apex, a MotoGP documentary, and there were no ads. IIRC, the Fallout series did have them, though.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

And dont forget Kanopy! My local library happens to participate in both.

https://www.kanopy.com/en

Very fortunate for you. Mine only has Hoopla, so that's all I knew about. It's nice that this space has some competition.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

same. why is it that sports needs to be subsidized by everyone? i don't get it. is it because they pay pro atheletes too much money?

The bottom line for cable TV or streaming bundling is everyone is paying for stuff they don't want.

 

[jbriano]

We've got Apple, Netflix, and Prime, yet we still "rented" what we actually wanted to watch twice this week.
Additionally, I'll have to add another service in May to watch the Giro and another service in July to watch the Tour de France... which I'll probably keep through August for the Vuelta.
The industry most certainly duped me into ditching my media server a few years ago, but it's time to bring it back.

 

[that guy strife]

"Are you sure you aren't just imagining things?"

We are way beyond this low tier beginner level of gaslighting in this conversation.

It's insane how you don't realize you aren't even part of the conversation.

You think talking about ethnicities or sexualities is woke. You dropped Windows for Apple because it was simpler. FFS, you follow NFL xD.

I can't even START to think about how to make you look worse than you're willingly showing yourself to be xD

 

[AdrianS]

" opting for cheaper or free alternatives, such as FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channels with linear programming."

I think you meant to say torrenting. FTFY.

Here in Aus I use 3 free streaming TV services:
ABC (public) - no ads
SBS (public) - 3 breaks of 4 ads each in a 2 hour movie)
Channel 7 (commercial) - quite a lot of ads.

That + TV + library + discs we own is enough for us.

 

[papito10]

While having a video library at your fingertips SOUNDS nice, a service like Netflix has not done anything in years that is truly memorable or will become a modern classic. None.

You are paying $360/year for that? For background TV, empty calorie entertainment?

Even if a service is reasonably-priced, say, $20 a month, do I really need to pay $240 a year to watch four movies? I can rent them.

it's increasingly becoming a total racket. AppleTV stands out because they've been churning our great shows. I tried to cancel it, but I can't - I am actually watching it.

That said, audit your subscriptions, fam. Do a Google Sheet to see how much you pay on all that per year, and get to thinning the herd. Especially now that the US regime is going to be openly consumer-hostile.

 

[papito10]

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.

I cut the cord in 2013, when I realized the incremental increases on my cable+internet bill were now making it $250/month. I had two premium channels. HBO is cheaper today than 10 years ago. For $200, you can have ALL the services today.

The thing, though, with premium channels before (just HBO), you would get a good chunk, if not most, of big movie releases, albeit with a huge delay compared to to day. Almost every Saturday night was a movie night.

Now, I feel like even if I am paying $100 a month for multiple services, I miss most movies I want to see.

 

[dragonfi]

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.

You are right. But the thing is, without all these media and to be honest a lot of them are either ads or serving ads, the economy will be pretty bad if everyone does the same.

 

[Sulla]

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.

But how much do you pay your cable company for bandwidth you stream on?

 

[Hezio]

The amount of people on Ars, a supposedly more left wing audience, who apparently still have a Prime subscription, really shows why the USA is doomed.

Like, how do so many of y'all complain about climate change, the far right, corporate greed etc, but then just, you know, give money to the ones doing all those things in earnest? I'm interested in how that doesn't result in some cognitive dissonance.

I know many, if not the majority, here know how to set up a little home server and run Yunohost or CasaOS or Cosmos. Or maybe even something more complex than any of those easier to use options. So, why? Why continue to financially support the people who then go on to fund people like Trump?...

 

[benwiggy]

I'm currently trying to get through the remainder of Deep Space 9 before it disappears from Netflix on 8th January.

The same thing happened with Jessica Jones, when I was halfway through and it was just suddenly no longer there.

 

[DarthSlack]

But how much do you pay your cable company for bandwidth you stream on?

$60/month. Which I consider as a separate expense because I absolutely need that for other things like work. Yeah, it may seem like a cop-out but internet is like electricity and water these days, you're not doing without it regardless of media consumption.

And it's also ridiculously expensive by developed country standards.

 

[foto69man]

Simple solution for our household, physical media. We never have to figure out what network something is on anymore, and it never disappears on us.

 

[SixDegrees]

Simple solution for our household, physical media. We never have to figure out what network something is on anymore, and it never disappears on us.

Ok. But I've got a handful of BluRays and DVDs that I've watched exactly once each, and that will very likely just continue their existence as dust collectors forevermore. If you watch something repeatedly this might make sense, but it's generally more expensive to do things this way if you only watch an offering once or twice ever.

 

[sleepyox]

Gabe Newell famously said that the secret was to give a better service than the pirates. ...

Except when the pirates use their capital power to own the legitimate service. The Ellison's hostile takeover bid is exactly that. Pirates of maralago loves to enslave the bread and butter of artists because, you know, public influence and control

 

[foto69man]

Ok. But I've got a handful of BluRays and DVDs that I've watched exactly once each, and that will very likely just continue their existence as dust collectors forevermore. If you watch something repeatedly this might make sense, but it's generally more expensive to do things this way if you only watch an offering once or twice ever.

I/We do rewatch things, but I have also known that streaming was a mixed bag for years and have a quite extensive collection.