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2/3s of 1000 People Surveyed Canceled a Streaming Service in the Last Year

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Re: 2/3s of 1000 People Surveyed Canceled a Streaming Service in the Last Year

#21
post #3

About a 1000 respondents (should be enough), self-selected (could be very bad, if the text that lured people to respond even vaguely hinted at cancellations), and they asked whether respondents cancelled a subscription in the last year, but not whether they took a new subscription (⇒ they can’t conclude anything about subscription fatigue, making the header)

I think you can draw a fairly firm conclusion that the space is saturated based on this data (although I agree that the self-selection may be problematic). It doesn't actually matter if they add a new subscription to replace the cancelled subscription - what matters is that they bothered to cancel a subscription at all. That implies that for roughly 7 out of 10 people, they are burdened enough by streaming subscripti…

Or they simply watched everything they were interested in watching on the first service so there was no point in keeping the subscription active. It's not like it takes any effort to cancel. They will come back to it later (it's easy at most to reactivate a dormant subscription) when it has accumulated enough new stuff.

That's what I've been doing for the streaming services that aren't bundled with something else I have for reasons other than video streaming (Prime Video because I have Amazon Prime, Hulu because I have Spotify, Peacock Premium because I have XFinity as my ISP, and Paramount+ because I have Walmart+).

For example a couple months before "Avengers: Endgame" was released I realized that I had to see it in theaters. My previous approach for Marvel movies of waiting until they showed up on some non-premium cable channel like FXX meant I was a couple years behind, and I realized there was no way I'd be able to avoid major spoilers while waiting to see Endgame that way. So I got a month of Netflix (they had all the Marvel movies back then) and caught up on Marvel, and a few other things, then cancelled.

Later I got Disney+ for a week (free trial) and caught up on Disney and Pixar animated movies (Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Onward), watched Captain Marvel, rewatched Endgame to see what I'd missed on my bathroom break when I saw it in theaters, and watched the Star Wars trilogy that starts with The Force Awakens, watched Rogue One, and cancelled.

Right now, a couple years later, I'm back on Disney+, because they sent me on offer for a month for $1.99. I've caught up again on Pixar (Soul, Luca, Turning Red), Disney animation (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto), Marvel (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, the Loki series), some Simpsons shorts, and am trying to decide if there is any new Star Wars that interests me. When the month is up I will rewatch Luca once or twice, and then cancel.

I'll be back on Netflix for a month probably next year to watch Lucifer.

I'll also probably at some point do a month of HBO Max for South Park.

Re: 2/3s of 1000 People Surveyed Canceled a Streaming Service in the Last Year

#22
post #12
post #8

Requiring subscription to three or more services in order to watch your favourite shows is going back to the dark ages. The industry doesn't learn.

We enjoyed a brief golden age before the value extracting minds of the media giants wrapped their heads around the idea of streaming and here we are again with content balkanized across way too many services each wanting their own cut of the pie.

Pirates to the rescue!
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