Streaming services have turned the wrong way in the past couple of years. While ad-powered plans are the big thing currently, there are other developments that many customers may not like. These push more and more customers to other options, including P2P.
Netflix started to push its ad-powered plan earlier this year and many streaming services have followed already or will follow Netflix’s example. Customers pay less for the subscription, but they have to watch advertisement instead.
It seems to be a lucrative deal for streaming services, as more and more start to push advertising on the platform. Netflix and Disney+ customers pay less when they sign-up for the ad-powered plan. Amazon sneaked in a little price hike, as it announced that all Prime Video users would get ads, unless they added an ad-free add-on to their plan for some extra Dollars.
Too many streaming services are a problem
Streaming services promised to do better than cable and regular TV offerings. Tune in whenever you want and watch as much as you want. The price was relatively low in the beginning and there were only a few services. Content was not spread across numerous services.
Movies and TV shows went an entirely different route than music. If you subscribe to a music streaming service, you will get access to the same catalog, with a few notable exceptions.
For TV shows and movies, things are not as customer friendly. Star Wars is exclusively available at Disney+, Netflix has Stranger Things, and HBO has The Wire. If you want the full catalog, you need to subscribe to a dozen or so services.
If you subscribe to all, you end up paying as much as you would for cable in the United States. One option to overcome this is to hop between streaming services frequently. Subscribe to Netflix for a month, watch everything you want, then switch to another service, and so on. You pay for a single service per month and still get to watch all the new content that is released per year. Only downside is that you may have to wait a month or two before you can finally watch something.
Ads are a major problem
Advertisement is another major problem. Many streaming services have ad-powered plans already or plan to introduce them. Some even push ads for all subscribers, unless they pay more to get rid of ads again.
Ads are the cheapest option when it comes to subscriptions, but this comes at the cost of having to watch ads every hour. Things go back fullcircle to TV, where you also have to sit through ads to watch shows and movies.
Amazon plans to introduce even more ads to users of its Fire TV offerings. These are already focused on pushing Amazon content. Soon, they will also deliver contextual sponsored tiles to customers.
Piracy is booming again
P2P networks, the Usenet and other services are seeing a revival. This seems to coincide with the networks push against password sharing, price increases and the introduction of more and more ads and ad-powered plans.
One study from the UK saw a “notable increase in piracy levels over the past two years” and that a declining trend seen in earlier studies appears to be reversing.
There are several reasons for the revival. First, because price increases make streaming services a luxury good. While some may be fine with viewing ads to get a discount, others won’t be.
Second, because of what individual streaming services offer. If you go to a torrent site, you find almost every show or movie there. If you go to any streaming service, you find some shows and movies there only.
Closing Words
The attractiveness of streaming services is going down, especially for users who can’t keep up with the constant price increases and users who want access to all content. Ads may work for some to mitigate these price hikes, but they are a no-go for others.
As the attractiveness off streaming services is going down, it is the reverse for other options. One of these options is P2P; it will continue to rise, provided that streaming services don’t reverse their course.
It is probably inevitable that streaming services will lose customers in the medium to long run. Prices continue to increase, ads continue to be pushed and content continues to be spread across a dozen or so services.
Now You: what is your take on this?