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

Streaming may get a little worse before it gets better.

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[jeffwaldo]

I think one big, obvious step is missing. Their big problem is churn. Prime subscribe for one show, watch 2-3, then leave. An annual contract would sort that out. Tie it to a price increase and offer the old price on an annual deal.

It has to be around the corner.

 

[truth serum]

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

I will NOT be sports- shamed. I'm a proud NFL watcher and I don't care who knows it!

Also all of the myriad of posters ITT complaining about how there are all these streaming channels but there is nothing to watch despite them spending billions on content. Ignoring the elephant in the room for one of the major reasons for that triggers my OCD so I feel compelled to point that out. It's a blessing and a curse I tell you.

I could go on and talk about how I once took a free community Apple OS class back in the early 2000's and decided it wasn't for me and haven't looked back since but that is beyond the scope of this conversation. Their streaming service is pretty great though.

 

[SixDegrees]

I think one big, obvious step is missing. Their big problem is churn. Prime subscribe for one show, watch 2-3, then leave. An annual contract would sort that out. Tie it to a price increase and offer the old price on an annual deal.

It has to be around the corner.

It's already a thing. Apple TV+ costs $13 for a single month, $99 for an annual subscription. I like some of their shows, but only some, few enough that I can easily work through two or three series in a single month, and then there's nothing else of interest to me until the next batch arrives. That's still a $86 per year savings for me. And Apple makes if super-easy to both subscribe and cancel. But tiered pricing is definitely a thing.

 

[Shazster]

I can't help but think that the downward trend of quality streaming options is inextricably linked to the downward trend of quality content.
Economically, I see decline. Socially?...decline. Educationally?...decline.
These cannot help but be reflected in the cultural product that these declining systems produce.
I just don't see a lot of anything out there that I'd really want to pay a streaming service for.
Eg. Andor. Awesome show. Very watchable.
Do I want to pay for a streaming service on the strength of one series when the rest of the watching cart is just mediocre dreck?

 

[DarthSlack]

I will NOT be sports- shamed. I'm a proud NFL watcher and I don't care who knows it!

Fine, just don't make those of us who don't give a flying fig about the NFL subsidize your cost.

Also all of the myriad of posters ITT complaining about how there are all these streaming channels but there is nothing to watch despite them spending billions on content. Ignoring the elephant in the room for one of the major reasons for that triggers my OCD so I feel compelled to point that out. It's a blessing and a curse I tell you.

Consider that it is VERY possible to spend billions creating content and still end up with dreck. "Reality" shows are super-duper cheap to make because talentless morons don't cost much. You don't even have set expenses, just a couple of clowns with cameras and someone pretending to be a director. Again, all very cheap. But make enough of those shows and you can spend billions with only raw sewage to show for it.

 

[SixDegrees]

Fine, just don't make those of us who don't give a flying fig about the NFL subsidize your cost.



Consider that it is VERY possible to spend billions creating content and still end up with dreck. "Reality" shows are super-duper cheap to make because talentless morons don't cost much. You don't even have set expenses, just a couple of clowns with cameras and someone pretending to be a director. Again, all very cheap. But make enough of those shows and you can spend billions with only raw sewage to show for it.

Gotta mention: Megalopolis, Coppla's vanity project, cost something like $150 million to make - out of Coppola's own pocket.

It's worldwide box office totaled $14 million.

It's the hottest of garbage, according to those who've seen it. I considered streaming it, but that's impossible now thanks to Coppola's massive ego insisting that it MUST be seen in theaters, or not seen at all.

Vast numbers of people chose Option Two.

 

[truth serum]

Gotta mention: Megalopolis, Coppla's vanity project, cost something like $150 million to make - out of Coppola's own pocket.

It's worldwide box office totaled $14 million.

It's the hottest of garbage, according to those who've seen it. I considered streaming it, but that's impossible now thanks to Coppola's massive ego insisting that it MUST be seen in theaters, or not seen at all.

Vast numbers of people chose Option Two.

I had considered going to see it during its first run but the theater options were so few and far between and the reviews were so bad I just never ended up going out to see it.

I will rent it once it becomes available though. Just out of curiosity. Hopefully it will at least be good enough to finish.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

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.

In fairness, they do at least give you a warning. I've done that with a few. Final Space was one. Also Cowboy Bebop, which they removed a year or so before the live action version came out - but the latter (which was not nearly so bad in retrospect as the plot changes and tonal disconnects made it seem at the time) flopped so hard that they brought the anime back!

I watched the Netflix Marvel series when they came out; they were great but not really rewatch material.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

I can't help but think that the downward trend of quality streaming options is inextricably linked to the downward trend of quality content.
Economically, I see decline. Socially?...decline. Educationally?...decline.
These cannot help but be reflected in the cultural product that these declining systems produce.
I just don't see a lot of anything out there that I'd really want to pay a streaming service for.
Eg. Andor. Awesome show. Very watchable.
Do I want to pay for a streaming service on the strength of one series when the rest of the watching cart is just mediocre dreck?

Education these days is All You Want to Eat, but it seems few are hungry.

Meanwhile semi-literate people are encouraged to sign up for college they can't afford.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

Fine, just don't make those of us who don't give a flying fig about the NFL subsidize your cost.

Geez, the amount of "Stop liking what I don't like" here is ridiculous. Do you understand that other VIEWERS don't make YOU pay for anything?

 

[poltroon]

Geez, the amount of "Stop liking what I don't like" here is ridiculous. Do you understand that other VIEWERS don't make YOU pay for anything?

In the case of sports I’m not sure that’s true. Do NFL rights mean there’s extra money for the quirky original shows I like? If so that’s rarely reported.

 

[nogglebeak]

once they stopped me from sharing an account with my son who lives with his mom then doubled the price i stopped caring about the morality of the high seas.

 

[nogglebeak]

Geez, the amount of "Stop liking what I don't like" here is ridiculous. Do you understand that other VIEWERS don't make YOU pay for anything?

uh , that is exactly how it works. they pay a licensing fee and the cost is passed on to all subscribers.

 

[Golgatha]

Just in Time Subscriptions will come with JIT risings costs. Just being realistic. The corps will continue squeezing until people give them the finger.

I'm there now with zero subscriptions and I had 6 going during COVID. They all priced themselves out and/or enshitified the product to the point I cancelled or turned off the annual subscription renewal.

Goodbye Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, Netflix, Paramount+, and HBO Max. They are all now getting exactly zero revenue from me.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

In the case of sports I’m not sure that’s true. Do NFL rights mean there’s extra money for the quirky original shows I like? If so that’s rarely reported.

The OP says he subscribes only for the sport, so presumably from his perspective his sporting interests are paying for Michael's Tears Save The Galaxy (Again).

 

[arsisloam]

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.

Please cite some examples of breaking immersion as related to wokeness? I'm not sure I understand.

 

[Dinosaurius]

uh , that is exactly how it works. they pay a licensing fee and the cost is passed on to all subscribers.

Sure - but that's not something that any of us subscribers have any effect on - and I say that as someone who can't stand sports of any kind on TV (with the exception of Robot Wars )

Also: We have to be realistic, too: It's all fine and easy to say "Then don't pay for streaming services that subsidize sports expenses" - but the number of people who will actually choose to do that is vanishingly small. The Great Unwashed Hordes want their TV services and if getting their weekly fix of The Handmaids Tale or whatever, means paying a little higher because some goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs needs a bajillion dollars to keep my hockey-crazed wife happy, then so be it.

Frankly, I'd be happy with just my Youtube account, but said crazed hockey wife would make my life a living hell without her HockeyHeroin.

 

[Dinosaurius]

Please cite some examples of breaking immersion? I'm not sure I understand.

There were more than a few examples on Babylon 5 where the "politics" of the station were clearly in reference to what was happening in the world at the time and the "coincidence" of the goings-on on Babylon 5 just happening to match whatever idiocy was currently going on in the American government was so far of a stretch that it absolutely broke the immersion.

 

[DarthSlack]

Geez, the amount of "Stop liking what I don't like" here is ridiculous. Do you understand that other VIEWERS don't make YOU pay for anything?

You might try paying attention to what you sign up for because bundles that cable companies require you to buy are a BIG part of how sports are paid for. When I had cable, I was forced to get ESPN in all it's various flavors. NOT getting ESPN was never on offer. And it was a notable slice of the overall costs.

So maybe do a little thinking before you out yourself as uninformed.

 

[raxadian]

From Netflix and chill to "Where the heck I put that DVD player? I got a bunch of movie DVDs for cheap!"

Honesty you can get still sealed movies for a few dollars if you know where to look, for the price of a montly sub you can buy several movies a month instead.

 

[flattail]

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 mean, one million percent this. An anecdote on how badly this got bungled in my opinion, from a self-admitted terrible consumer buying hook-and-sinker into the ecosystem:

I have a healthy amount of unearmarked money every month and at one point had subscriptions to basically all the major services; Netflix, HBO, Paramount, Apple TV, Prime, Disney, etc.

I was the perfect customer - I didn't much care about the price because I am fortunate enough that a hundred-some-odd dollars a month for me was a non-issue. Sure, I dabbled with Plex and other 'questionable acquiring methods' of media in my youth, but I got sick of it. Too much work, too much effort. I just wanted to fire up an app and watch something. And I was happy to pay a premium to watch what I want, when I wanted, ad free.

But then it dawned on me that we were spending more time trying to figure out where to watch something than we were actually watching said thing. Every time we had to think of what streaming service had this movie or show, or if it was still available, or did it get shuffled around?

Then some shows and movies simply...disappeared and were not available anywhere. A few here and there, but it definitely perked me up that some things simply get de-lsited and I may never be able to watch them again.

Then the ads started showing up and it was getting harder and harder to find ad-free tiers that where truly ad free.

The tipping point came last year, when I realized exactly what the post above is referencing - it no longer became easier to pay for what I wanted than it was to explore other options. So I did.

And bother, let me tell you, it's drop-dead simple now. I have a single app - Stremio - on my Shield TV with some add-ons that you can very easily find information on online should you choose to do so. It took me all of 15 minutes to set up.

And now, if I want to watch something I just...open the app, search for it, and click play. No guessing what service provider its on. No juggling of logins. And I can stream things to my TV, my iPad for working out in my home gym, my phone for when I want to watch a hockey game but the kiddo is Minecrafting.

It all just...works. This is what streaming should have been. And for a golden moment, it was that. But it's not now and if the value proposition has shifted for me - a self-admitted lazy old dog with disposable income - to look at alternatives...I dunno man. That seems like a bad place to be as these collective companies...

 

[passivesmoking]

UK Netflix is going to drop most of its Star Trek content next week. So I'm binging it now (currently watching Vic Fontaine getting shot by the Terrans) and will probably cancel Netflix when the time comes.

Ultimately if there's something I really want to watch, I'll get it on physical media and rip it to my NAS so I can stream it around the house, download it to a device when I'm out and about, and still have the physical copy as a backup. In the long run it'll be cheaper and I won't have to worry about stuff I want to watch more than once vanishing.

If you want to watch Star Trek Prodigy, it's pretty much the only way you can do it now. Even its owners aren't streaming it.

 

[passivesmoking]

“antiwoke” Star Trek

In that version, everyone in the mirror universe is a vegetarian and drives a Nissan Space Leaf. Also they have hipster beards and topknots instead of goatees.

 

[idontliketopickusernames]

Here's what streamers can expect in 2026: more piracy.

 

[wackazoa]

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.

I feel you. Im a baseball fan. Football, I watch now mostly to have something to talk to my father about that isnt politics (hes maga). But it has gotten to the point where the NFL, College Football, MLB, NBA, NHL... are just ad companies. I just almost hate watch baseball now. They will small box the game to show you a commercial between pitches!

I suspended my Hulu sub after Nov. until March-ish, and Ill tel you Im not missing it. CFP going on? Dont care. NFL playoff push? Not bothering me a bit. I do think there will come a time for everyone where the line has been reached and they will just decide to do something else. And then we will get that New Yorker cartoon IRL.

 

[HiroTheProtagonist]

I feel you. Im a baseball fan. Football, I watch now mostly to have something to talk to my father about that isnt politics (hes maga). But it has gotten to the point where the NFL, College Football, MLB, NBA, NHL... are just ad companies. I just almost hate watch baseball now. They will small box the game to show you a commercial between pitches!

I suspended my Hulu sub after Nov. until March-ish, and Ill tel you Im not missing it. CFP going on? Dont care. NFL playoff push? Not bothering me a bit. I do think there will come a time for everyone where the line has been reached and they will just decide to do something else. And then we will get that New Yorker cartoon IRL.

Not to mention that 70% of the ads they run are for sports gambling. Like sure, I was really on the fence about throwing away thousands of dollars on weird parlays, then Kevin Hart came on to the screen to tell me it's a good thing to do, clearly now I'm all set to start gambling! Thanks Draft Kings!

Almost makes me miss the days of the ads being for nothing but beer, boner pills and life insurance.

 

[jawshoeaw]

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.

It would cost me $100/mo extra to have this utopia of entertainment without ads.

 

[lp0_on_fire]

I get a streaming bundle for free through work but I can't be bothered with it. If my girlfriend is around on a Friday night we watch Bill Maher. Otherwise there is nothing on but the episodic equivalent of shovelware.

 

[JustYourAverageJDP]

...aaaaaand here we go with the lowbrow name calling.

I will respectfully ask the mods to give them a little nudge to keep things civil. Not because of my own feelings but because I don't want this to devolve into another fart sniffing contest of who can call somebody a Nazi the hardest. Because you know that is what's coming next. Atomic clocks are less predicable.

Do you see the irony in the name calling and appealing to mods for civility? Its only applicable to the respect you think you are owed I guess.

The beauty of freedom of speech is people can disagree with you, and call you stupid. You can do the same.

You know what wont get you acceptance: whining about being downvoted or crying to mods to back you up.

You should be allowed to speak your opinion. You can say other people are stupid for disagreeing with you. It just helps your position if you are actually high minded about freedom of speech and civility.

If you dont like that, there are plenty of people that agree with you on X.

 

[SinclairZX81]

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.

I'm slowly following in your footsteps.

I'm keeping Prime because, for now - not paying for shipping is still making that a win. Amazon is within a price-hike or two of that equation flipping negative, and it's certainly not Prime Video keeping me on the service. I use it, but incidentally to the overall Prime subscription.

Netflix is one more price hike away from losing me. I have a couple of shows I'll miss there, but "miss" is not "can't live without" and the services need to become clear about that.

I have enough physical media to make a Plex server worthwhile and have been looking into NAS modules for that. I have had a couple of bad experiences with NAS in the past that have been holding me back (bricked hardware because Seagate couldn't be bothered to keep a driver up to date, etc.) but I'm willing to revisit, I think.

Mostly, I've been rediscovering the beauty of books. My Kindle Scribe is big enough for a better reading experience, and e-books mean I don't need the physical bookshelf space for a pretty large and now faster-expanding library.

Honestly, putting on some soft music and reading for the evening is better on my mind than dealing with most other entertainment these days. It's good to be back to it.

 

[abazigal]

Here's what streamers can expect in 2026: more piracy.

I feel like at this rate, the logical conclusion is that shows will become so crappy that it simply won't be worth my time to pirate, much less watch.

I am curious as to how many people are like me. Some time around the end of 2023, I stopped paying for Netflix and Disney+. I am currently subscribed to YouTube Premium and Prime (mainly for the free amazon delivery, but hey, Arrow just recently came to Prime after leaving Netflix).

I feel like I am more invested in watching random people halfway across the world vlog about their daily life than catching the latest multi-million dollar production from these media companies. Youtube music coming bundled is a nice bonus, though the app really sucks. I guess the nice thing about Youtube is that there's always something to watch. Some random streamer, someone eating, Linus talking about tech, Josh Strife Hayes ranting about a video game for 3 hours...

Unfortunately, it also seems like Youtube Premium is headed for a price hike in 2026. A family plan already costs as much as a Netflix premium sub where I live, but my whole family uses it, and I don't think I can ever go back to ads again.

 

[mvmiller12]

I'm slowly following in your footsteps.

I'm keeping Prime because, for now - not paying for shipping is still making that a win. Amazon is within a price-hike or two of that equation flipping negative, and it's certainly not Prime Video keeping me on the service. I use it, but incidentally to the overall Prime subscription.

Netflix is one more price hike away from losing me. I have a couple of shows I'll miss there, but "miss" is not "can't live without" and the services need to become clear about that.

I have enough physical media to make a Plex server worthwhile and have been looking into NAS modules for that. I have had a couple of bad experiences with NAS in the past that have been holding me back (bricked hardware because Seagate couldn't be bothered to keep a driver up to date, etc.) but I'm willing to revisit, I think.

Mostly, I've been rediscovering the beauty of books. My Kindle Scribe is big enough for a better reading experience, and e-books mean I don't need the physical bookshelf space for a pretty large and now faster-expanding library.

Honestly, putting on some soft music and reading for the evening is better on my mind than dealing with most other entertainment these days. It's good to be back to it.

I don't have a commercial NAS per se.

I'm running an older Dell Poweredge T340 w/TrueNAS and 8x8TB HDDs in a RAIDZ2 pool. I have a much older Poweredge R515 also running TrueNAS and 8x8TB HDDs (PERC H200) that I power up every week or so to backup the T340 to for onsite backups. Both machines were given to me and the only major expense for them were the HDDs.

These systems have the advantage of being rock solid reliable and I can use any HDDs I want. Drivers are likewise a non-issue since both machines are fully supported under Linux. Even so, you can probably put together a TrueNAS system out of spare parts for very little investment and have a lot more control over it than your average commercial NAS.

 

[truth serum]

Do you see the irony in the name calling and appealing to mods for civility? Its only applicable to the respect you think you are owed I guess.

The beauty of freedom of speech is people can disagree with you, and call you stupid. You can do the same.

You know what wont get you acceptance: whining about being downvoted or crying to mods to back you up.

You should be allowed to speak your opinion. You can say other people are stupid for disagreeing with you. It just helps your position if you are actually high minded about freedom of speech and civility.

If you dont like that, there are plenty of people that agree with you on X.

None of what you said is how it works here.

And honestly and truly I don't care about downvotes other then the very rare occasional one that is placed without a clear context that I can readily understand.

And the plea to the mods wasn't for my benefit. It was for yours. If you are any good at reading people you should already know that my level of toxic knows no bounds and this is me playing nice.

But even after all of that this latest thread has been the best and most productive one on the issues and problems of modern media that this stie has had that I can recall. It's usually completely braindead. With the most massive and unimaginable level of fart sniffing that one can imagine. The community has come a ways over the recent years. I don't know if it's a long way but its a ways, which to me is good.

 

[arthurdawg]

Possibly mentioned somewhere in the comments...

Check out your local digital over the air channels. You can get a 20-25$ antenna and potentially access a great bit of free content depending on your location.

We can access a ton of good stuff where I'm located.

 

[Marlor_AU]

Possibly mentioned somewhere in the comments...

Check out your local digital over the air channels. You can get a 20-25$ antenna and potentially access a great bit of free content depending on your location.

We can access a ton of good stuff where I'm located.

It's a fantastic option if it works in your location.

Cable never really took off here in Australia, so it seems every house still has a Yagi antenna on the roof. This means there's a fantastic fallback if streaming gets too expensive or catch-up TV services are too frustrating. Just watch free broadcast TV.

Or even better record it with a PVR (I use MythTV). Apart from recording all TV series that look interesting, I also have a rule to record any films with a rating of three stars or higher that aren't already sitting on disk (in the recording queue for the next 24 hours is an eclectic mix from "Monsieur Verdoux" to "Paddington 2" to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "Godzilla Minus One"). There's more content available than I could ever possibly watch. All in high-bitrate HD, and with ads that can be skipped with a single button-press.

 

[hillspuck]

Please cite some examples of breaking immersion as related to wokeness? I'm not sure I understand.

It's immersion breaking to see non-white non-cis non-straight people in roles set in eras where they wouldn't have existed. That's woke.

It's not immersion breaking to see a bunch of British actors speaking English while they play a bunch of Soviets. That's just totally normal and not woke.

It's so simple!

 

[abazigal]

I think one big, obvious step is missing. Their big problem is churn. Prime subscribe for one show, watch 2-3, then leave. An annual contract would sort that out. Tie it to a price increase and offer the old price on an annual deal.

It has to be around the corner.

I feel that the people running these streaming companies are very aware of the risks of churn, but are. choosing to address this in 2 ways.

1) Live sports - there's no value in going back to watch a football match that has already happened and the outcome is known to all. This is an incentive to keep you subscribed because that's the only way to watch games as they are playing.

2) Bundles. Ideally, when you are subscribed to multiple streaming services, there will always be at least 1 show worthy of watching at any one time.

A monthly price hike that pushes users to subscribe to an annual plan can work too, but I notice that Netflix seems to be the noticeable holdout. Perhaps they know something we don't.

 

[david1024]

There are only 1-2 shows that are "must see" and only on a streaming service, but just about everything else I like is on DVD for purchase, or is better in the theater. No streaming headaches about what service to watch it on.

If they want to play the increase profits game, I'll just make sure I stay off the subscriber roles longer (looking at you Amazon and Disney!)

 

[Marlor_AU]

A monthly price hike that pushes users to subscribe to an annual plan can work too, but I notice that Netflix seems to be the noticeable holdout. Perhaps they know something we don't.

Even with price hikes for the monthly option or bundle discounts, it's still always going to be the cheaper option to subscribe for a month or two to a single service, watch the best content that was released in the past year, then move on to another service and do the same. I really don't see a way for them to get around that other than ditching monthly plans (which is a huge disincentive for new users) or through live content such as sport (attractive to some users but not others).

That said, I'm still amazed by the number of price-sensitive users who still keep multiple subscriptions active even when they may not use every service in a given month. I guess micromanaging subscriptions is too much hassle for most people, so it may not be a real issue at the macro level (which, if so, is great for those of us who are happy to churn and squeeze every last bit of value from each service).