A New Streaming Customer Emerges: The Subscription Pauser (msn.com) 46
Customers have formed new habits of regularly pausing subscriptions and returning to them within a year. From a report: As subscription prices rise and streaming-centric home entertainment becomes the norm, families are establishing their own hierarchies of always-on services versus those that come and go with seasons of hit shows or sports. New data from subscription analytics provider Antenna offer a deeper look at the subscription pausing habits customers are developing as services like Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV+ become the go-to way of watching TV in many households, instead of cable.
The monthly median percentage of premium streaming video subscribers who rejoined the same service they had canceled within the prior year was 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024, up from 29.8% in 2022. The habit of pausing and resuming service means that the industrywide rate of customer defections, which has risen over the past year, is less pronounced than it appears. The average rate of U.S. customer cancellations among premium streaming video services reached 5.2% in August, but after factoring in re-subscribers, the rate of defections was lower at 3.5%.
The increasingly ingrained habit underscores the importance of streamers regularly delivering hit shows and films as well as live fare such as sporting events. Streaming services are trying to use a mix of bundles, promotions, well-timed marketing emails and lower-cost ad-supported plans to lure customers back faster or help them feel they are getting enough value to stick around longer.
The monthly median percentage of premium streaming video subscribers who rejoined the same service they had canceled within the prior year was 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024, up from 29.8% in 2022. The habit of pausing and resuming service means that the industrywide rate of customer defections, which has risen over the past year, is less pronounced than it appears. The average rate of U.S. customer cancellations among premium streaming video services reached 5.2% in August, but after factoring in re-subscribers, the rate of defections was lower at 3.5%.
The increasingly ingrained habit underscores the importance of streamers regularly delivering hit shows and films as well as live fare such as sporting events. Streaming services are trying to use a mix of bundles, promotions, well-timed marketing emails and lower-cost ad-supported plans to lure customers back faster or help them feel they are getting enough value to stick around longer.
that's me (Score:3)
Yeah, that's me-- if there's a series we want to watch, I subscribe to whatever service has it, then when we're done, and want to watch something that's on a different service, unsubscribe.
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streaming is a scam, first hollywood corrupts copyright laws then they overcharge us for our own culture, people we are getting ripped off and cheated
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Apple TV is the big one for me for this. There just isn't enough content to justify a forever subscription. Not even remotely.
So my pattern is once a year I resub for a month to catch the latest seasons of whatever I'm watching , theres a few of them, and then once done, unsubscribe for the year.
Theres some good shows on that thing. Severence, Invasion (S2 was far better than the first season, which suffered terrible pacing problems) , For all mankind and even Foundation (terrible adaption of the book, but
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I'd just add Slow Horses to this. I'm waiting until I have a little gap in my schedule to re-subscribe, watch that, then dump Apple TV again!
I tip my hat to those with the patience (Score:4, Insightful)
Half the time I can't even remember to fetch copies of the shows I'm fond of watching from the high seas when new episodes come out. There's no way I'd remember to cancel and resubscribe. I just keep Amazon Prime because it's included with the shipping, and my partner gets access to a major streaming service as a perk from his employer.
Most of the time though, I'm just re-watching old Stargate episodes from my media server with Kodi. I'm at that age where everything new kind of sucks anyway.
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It's not that hard; you just need to keep a permanent list of all the streaming services you rotate through, and make sure it's kept updated with "subscribed on" / "unsubscribed on" dates.
The other thing I do is - when I unsubscribe from a service, I move that service's app down to the bottom of the Apple TV main screen. When I re-subscribe, the icon gets moved back up towards the top. I assume you can do the same sort of thing with Fire Sticks and Google's stuff as well.
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I would hate keeping tabs on all the subscriptions and turning them on/off all the time. :-)
I have a nice DVD collection of selected films and a few series, and there's rarely something new that I would miss if I couldn't watch it.
I do like to sniff out downloads if I'm in the mood for some nostalgia, like some Magnum or the first season of Miami Vice I'm currently watching with one eye while doing some simple stuff. Everything Stargate I already binged several years ago.
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I didn't watch most of Atlantis (but enough to be amused when Jason Momoa broke through) maybe i should try to find it / check it out.
I wish SGU had gotten another few seasons...
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Try TV Calendar: https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/ca... [pogdesign.co.uk]
If you create an account you can select the shows you want to follow and see when they air. Here's a Greasemonkey script that adds links directly to The Pirate Bay and RARBG searches to make it easier to grab a copy:
Wait until minimum subscription period is 3 months (Score:2)
MAny of the streamers will adapt in many ways:
1.) Minimum subscription period is now 3 months.
2.) Seasonal promotions of the type: buy three months, get the fourth free.
3.) For a season , dump the first three episodes in one go, then episode a week, until 3 three episode season finale all at once. (I perosnally would reeeealy love that)
4.) Bundling with other streaming services.
5.) Bundling with other Stuff (shops like costco, airline loyalty programs like AAdvantage, your cell carrier, even Amex)
So, no big
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While binging is satisfying in the moment, it also pushes a movie-like pacing because that's how the creators expect you to consume their product.
But even a season is a bad idea. It's really difficult to turn out more than a dozen good episodes of television a year, always has been. If you can only do a dozen episodes a year, I say throw out one a month. There's more than enough content out there that you could follow 30 different shows that way and have a new thing to watch every day. And in 'shared un
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Some are already compensating, by putting up shows for a period of time, usually less than a month, then pulling them altogether. You wanna keep up with new shows? Gotta keep that subscription throughout the season at least. The second I saw that behavior I dropped that subscription and never went back. Not worth it. Maybe if the shows were really, REALLY good, but sorta mildly entertaining ain't enough to keep a year around subscription.
This is why streamers are long-term doomed (Score:2)
There's no point in having your own streaming service, trying to build a walled garden. People will always want something that's not in your catalog, and they will always be willing to jump ship.
Content generation and content delivery are naturally different beasts, and the streaming giants would probably be doing themselves a favor by setting up delivery sharing agreements.
And since delivery is mainly geographical in nature (it's the internet, but you probably want some serious regional caching), let loca
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People will always want something that's not in your catalog, and they will always be willing to jump ship.
Board the ship with the jolly roger there matey and plunder the seas for a bounty the likes of which ye never seen.
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I have no idea what you mean, and neither does my parrot.
Cue reconnection fees if service is paused (Score:5, Insightful)
,,, for more than once in a service year.
Streaming company bosses: Ain't no one going to get in our way of profits.
All content has an artificial price based on scarcity because it would be worthless if it was shared too easily. This calls into question its real value.
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Hoist the sails! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
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That's what car insurance companies have done, so it's a good prediction.
The time before last I needed car insurance I just called up and got some, same day.
Now AFAICT that is impossible. It takes days to get even bad insurance and the good insurance companies don't want to talk to you unless you already have insurance. Except for Allstate, but they are no longer writing new single item policies, at least in California. They will sell you home+car insurance, or multi-vehicle insurance, but they won't write
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They could try that, but I suspect it would make people hesitatate to restart a service more than it would cause them to hesitate to discontinue one. At the least, they may defer reconnecting if that 1 year period is about to expire in 2 months. And there is the real possibility they may not do it exactly after that 2 month period.
So, is it worth it if those fees keep someone from giving them money for 2,3, or more months to avoid a fee that doesn't even cover the cost of anything?
Don't forget the "coutner activist" (Score:5, Interesting)
They who will cut a sub to a service because that service funds "activist" groups they find distasteful.
*waves at Disney and Hulu*
Not a penny from me to Disney, Pixar and Hulu, for leveraging #metoo to boot Lassater and drag all the Disney-owned franchises into pandering hell.
Not only did I cut all the Disney-related services, now when I do buy old Disney / Pixar / Lucasfilm stuff I buy used from ebay or local 2nd-hand shops.
Not a penny to the mouse or any of his properties.
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> Do megacorps worry about that much though?
Not at all, the sort of people that do this are probably 1% of their total market. If those people come and go all at the same time, they're probably lost in the noise of normal sign ups and cancellations.
However, I do the same as the OP here. You do have to take a stand somewhere, and there's really no good reason to keep funding organisations that do you (you as in you personally, or those you care about) harm. Yes yes, it's "impossible" to fully stop using G
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Unless you were there, you really have no idea what behaviors he engaged in, do you? It seems to me your opposition to him being pressured to leave (he has now found other employment) is based on your overall impression of the "metoo" movement rather than any facts of this specific case.
What a surprise (Score:3)
You open a grocery store with a subscription model, "$99 a month and all-you-can-take", and you are surprised that people would subscribe, get truckloads of groceries home, and then un-sub until they needed stuff again?
The old cable subscription model works because people cannot timeshift. Similarly, $299 a month all-you-can-eat meal plans subscriptions could work because you can't take 3-months worth of food home and then un-sub. But TV shows and films? It isn't hard to binge watch everything you wanted in 3 months, then unsub for 6-9 months for new shows to be made. The new episodes aren't so good that people MUST watch it as soon as they come out. Very few shows are that good, GoT was something no studio can replicate yet.
And guess what? Having exclusive deals that keep different shows only available in different platforms only encourage people to hop around platforms. If one care enough to want to watch the exclusive shows/films in different platforms, it make no sense to subscribe to multiple platforms when you can pay just a fraction by hopping around them over the year.
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GoT was something no studio can replicate yet.
GoT was so good that not even GoT could replicate it in the last season. >_
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What do you mean? The last season was great! I'm just glad HBO wisely stopped where the books ended and resisted the temptation to move forward with a season 6 and 7... those probably would've been dreadful.
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Even season 4 was pretty iffy. Season 5 had its moments, but also had some WTFery just hanging there leaving us scratching our heads. I admire your ability to ignore the following seasons. Good grief, what a disaster.
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The last season was terrible with plot holes so big you could drive oil tanker through, here are a couple
Winter is coming for seven years, and the white walkers planning it for centuries but the head of white walkers who knows if he dies the entire army dies tries to kill Bran Stark personally, and Arya jumps out and kills him, what a dumb ass move when he had an army to kill him.
When the they where being attacked by the army that could raise the dead, Tyrion who was supposed to be a master strategist locke
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Never happened. That's probably the sort of stupid plot they'd have come up with if they'd been dumb enough to do a season 7, though. Thank heavens they resisted the temptation!
I'm the old kind of streaming customer (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a customer at all. Netflix canceled my Basic plan so now they get nothing. Not sure why they think that's better.
Quite happy with Sonarr + Plex instead.
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Cancelation fees (Score:1)
I will subscribe to one service, binge, cancel, subscribe to a different service, binge, cancel, repeat. More variety without spending more.
Are cancelation fees about to make a comeback? Loyalty rewards for consecutive months? Tie-ins with other benefits designed to keep you subscribed?
It's a racket!
I tend to keep subs going (Score:2)
But I guess I am too lazy to cancel some of them.
One thing that the channels could do is advertise more of what they have on. Amazon Prime doesn't list all of what the add-on channels have once you are subscribed.
Yep (Score:2)
Suspicious Marketing Bull$#!% Enters The Ring (Score:1)
The value proposition (Score:2)
Consequence of killing sharing (Score:2)
When I was sharing my Netflix with family, I'd make sure to pay it every month. Now? What's the point. I don't use it all the time. Really, only when a show I want to watch comes out. So why pay for the most expensive streamer all the time when I can't even share it? It's not like I don't have 7 other apps to watch shows and movies on.
becoming like cable tv (Score:2)