If you were hoping for a respite from rising streaming subscription fees in 2025, you’re out of luck. Several streaming providers have already increased monthly and/or annual subscription rates, continuing a disappointing trend from the past few years, with no foreseeable end.
Subscribers have generally seen an uptick in how much money they spend to access streaming services. In June, Forbes reported that 44 percent of the 2,000 US streaming users it surveyed who “engage with content for at least an hour daily” said their streaming costs had increased over the prior year.
Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Media Trends report found that 48 percent of the 3,517 US consumers it surveyed said that they would cancel their favorite streaming video-on-demand service if the price went up by $5.
Similarly, in a blog post about 2025 streaming trends, consumer research firm GWI reported that 52 percent of US TV viewers believe streaming subscriptions are getting too expensive, “which is a 77 percent increase since 2020.” A GWI spkesperon told me that the data comes from GWI’s flagship dataset and surveying people from over 50 global markets. Its methodology is available here.) GWI added that globally, the top reason cited by customers who have canceled or are considering canceling a streaming service was cost (named by 39 percent of consumers), followed by price hikes (32 percent).
“Pay TV packages and inflation have increased at similar rates in recent years. But over the past two years, streaming has gotten much more expensive relative to both,” eMarketer’s report says.
The only way to get them to atop raising prices is to cancel and unfortunately our society is incapable of denying themselves little treats
That’s because the only thing American society are the treats. We don’t have healthcare, we don’t have a third space ( a place besides home and work where we can just enjoy life without spending money), we don’t have a house we could ever afford, but damnit, we can buy $5 jalapeño poppers at Chili’s and buy streaming services! American society has placed importance around net worth and what material things you have.
Prices will never ever go down because it’s honestly the only thing we have.
It’s all bread & circus and they’re cutting down on the bread.
Would you look at that, its still $0 for me.
Yeah Mullvad is coming in pretty steady on that front.
It’s still 5€ per month.
Become your own streaming service because they’re just greedy assholes.
There’s a bill being introduced in the US by a California Democrat that would allow courts to order ISPs and DNS providers to block pirating sites. Of course the MPAA authored it.
Democrats sure know what’s important right now. Can’t imagine why they lost so fucking hard.
Also, for the morons who will shit on me with idiotic assumptions cause their puny brains only function in binary…fuck repubs too.
Dems remove Corporate phallus from mouth
“Why don’t you plebes appreciate us?”
And speaking of MPAA, I can’t recommend the documentary “This film is not yet rated” enough. Delves into the origins of the MPAA and why a private company that is very secretive about its members has so much power in Hollywood.
It’s almost like the inflation of the past four years was just corporate greed the whole time.
I’m down to 1, I don’t count Amazon because it has ads and I only pay for prime for shipping, but the quality of stuff from Amazon lately I might even cancel that.
but the quality of stuff from Amazon lately I might even cancel that.
Do it. You can still get free shipping on orders over $35 which further acts as a disincentive to buying things. Our household canceled Prime when the ads came. It was rocky at first just because we were so used to being able to order and get something quick. However, the shipping times kept increasing (no where close to 2-day) and the cost of Prime kept going up. Ads was the last straw and we dropped it.
Look at the cost you’re paying for Prime and consider how many orders you’d have to place to break even (using the Prime membership money just to pay for shipping when you need it faster, etc).
Look at the cost you’re paying for Prime and consider how many orders you’d have to place to break even (using the Prime membership money just to pay for shipping when you need it faster, etc).
I exceed the hell out of that in probably a couple weeks for my business. I hate it, but I’m pinched to keep costs down and time is valuable, and unfortunately Amazon fills that requirement too well. I live in a small town, I don’t have time to dedicate an entire day to driving to civilization and back, plus fuel costs. Plus, Amazon gets it to my mail depot faster than I can get it from other suppliers, without having to pay shipping.
It seems very reckless to have studdingsails out in those conditions… Bad seamanship.
clearly it be supernatural and caught them unawares.
Arr!
Lol lemmyworlders will have to join a cool server to travel the left-handed path.
That’s the beauty of the fediverse - no they don’t!
Yeah they do. Lemmyworld blocks the piracy subs
Ahh didn’t know that. How dumb. Well the first mistake is being part of lemmyworld lol
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We’re in a closed loop with this shit. Just like with cable TV, the more people quit using it, the more they will gouge the remaining customers. Because greed and laziness are more important to these companies than affordability or product value to their customers. Their customers are just rubes to be exploited.
What pisses me off is the way they pass movies and shows amongst each other and arbitrarily drop them from their platforms to pull this artificial scarcity nonsense. Oh you want to watch this movie? We don’t have it anymore, better sign up for that other service. Or, sorry this movie from the 60s is unavailable on any service, but you can “rent” it for $10/24hrs. Then there is the app causing grief for no good reason (cough Paramount), or two many people are watching the same thing and the CDN isn’t scaled appropriately for a service you already pay too much for, or you can’t watch Netflix in a browser on Linux because DRM, or we decided your HDMI cable is not up to our spec requirements, even though it was gone 5 minutes ago, because fuck you. And then on top of it all, the quality from every streaming provider is dog shit.
And do the companies care? Nope, not one bit. What are you gonna do about it, not watch TV? In 2025? Get with the program pleb, now bend over and shit benjamins to keep your wife and kids occupied.
You know which service doesn’t have all these issues? My damn home server, and the quality is fantastic. And all it costs me is the electricity (but let’s not talk about my power bill).
When HBO dropped Westworld I lost my shit lmao like really? You can’t even keep your own show? Unsubscribed after that.
Hence, piracy is a service problem. Capitalism clearly can’t be trusted to provide the services without extortion.
Quoting a successful capitalist (Gaben), who excelled at making money by giving us what we want, to bag on capitalism. That is some peak lemmy.
Are people quiting tho?
No. Netflix’s earnings actually shows very high user growth recently. Their earnings was a week ago and they had an increase of 19 million subscribers in Q4 2024 - even higher than their COVID growth.
On top of that, their net profit went from $938m in 2023 to $1.9bn in 2024.
From a business perspective, Netflix is absolutely killing it right now.
I’ve cancelled, and so have some others on Lemmy, but we’re an absolutely tiny amount of people. Fuck Netflix. Self-hosting isn’t as hard as it initially seems.
I got zero problem with people participating in voluntary rape. I won’t play, but the rape is on them.
What?
I know I have, and several friends and family have. And the fact that there’s been a lot of discussion online from people expressing their frustration and disappointment about price increases and dwindling value, makes me think that it’s a broader trend.
Yes I have been here for there discussions since the price gouging started and I personally only got 1 streamer.
However, I am pretty sure Netflix numbers are up others ones are not growing. But I don’t think people are actually existing yet in any significant numbers.
Yet…
Yarr
New year, new price increases 👐
My lifetime Plex subscription was sub $100 years ago. That’s a one time payment mind you. None of my media disappears nor has ads.
Granted, I had to do the footwork, but it’s all self hosted and not going anywhere.
Yes I know there are other solutions, some of us are upset with Plex, but this is still working just fine. One day I’ll start testing Jellyfin.
Speaking to those in the U.S., Your local library has a huge collection of DVDs. Your local thrift shop and eBay have blu ray players (most of which will upscale DVDs during playback) for cheap.
Your library may also have streaming services like Kanopy and Hoopla
Mine does Blu-ray too. DVD wise they have more TV shows than I’ve heard of, cryptic ones I have heard of, anime, comedy… Almost more than the local used DVD stores.
Definitely don’t get a drive to rip them for later either, like I didn’t do with CDs back in the day.
I’ve been less and less interested in TV at all. I find myself mostly rewatching the few really good shows from times past and largely ignoring the new stuff. It’s nice to have something to put on while I’m cooking, but if all the streaming services disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Yeah it’s mostly YouTube for me these days. The rest of it I get with Kodi or Stremio.
Oh, we raised the prices by $5? We meant to raise it by $10. Tell ya what, we’ll fix the mistake and raise it by $15. Give us your money, you pleb!
Guys it’s just the eggs that they have to use in the streaming production factory. Every streaming uses a half dozen eggs to manufacture. It’s actually really expensive!
Free.mp3 - Dubioza Kolektiv
(It’s a surprise that will help us later)
