Many more people are jumping from one streaming subscription to another, a behavior that could have big implications for the entertainment industry.

Americans are getting increasingly impulsive about hitting the cancellation button on their streaming services. More than 29 million — about a quarter of domestic paying streaming subscribers — have canceled three or more services over the last two years, according to Antenna, a subscription research firm. And the numbers are rising fast.

The data suggests a sharp shift in consumer behavior — far from the cable era, when viewers largely stuck with a single provider, as well as the early days of the so-called streaming wars, when people kept adding services without culling or jumping around.

Among these nomadic subscribers, some are taking advantage of how easy it is, with a monthly contract and simple click of a button, to hopscotch from one service to the next. Indeed, these users can be fickle — a third of them resubscribe to the canceled service within six months, according to Antenna’s research.

“In three years, this went from a very niche behavior to an absolute mainstream part of the market,” said Jonathan Carson, the chief executive of Antenna.

Non-paywall link

  • Gonkulator@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Mark my words. They will be switching to the car insurance model soon. You will have to pay for blocks of time. 3 mos, 6 mos, 12 mos. Probably also demand to be able to debit your bank acct. directly.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      When this happens I hope PayPal or Klarna has a usable emulant I can give Netflix so they’ll fuck off AND not get power to my actual banking.

      • hperrin@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Have you tried Bittorrent with Proton VPN? It’s great for downloading Linux ISOs. I know that’s not related to this conversation, I just felt like you might want to download some Linux ISOs.

        Also https://1337x.to has a great directory of Linux ISOs you can download.

    • piskertariot@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s already 1 month or 12 months. The obvious gap-filler there is to charge more for new activations. New subscribers are $25.99 for the first month, then only $16.99/month after.