Many more people are jumping from one streaming subscription to another, a behavior that could have big implications for the entertainment industry.
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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.
It could fit.
Each subscription is carefully planned based on what shows the family wants to watch.
Each cancellation is on a whim. “Hey, the monthly bills are too high. Are we done with [service]?”
It doesn’t make any sense for somebody that “carefully plans” their subscription to be surprised by the monthly bills and “on a whim” cancel.
Impulse buyers are the ones that get surprises at the end of the month.
Judging by comments here, plenty of people carefully plan subscribing for one month only: so they subscribe and immediate cancel, all planned, and then have a month to see the bunch of series and movies exclusive to that provider that they planned to see.