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The Subscription Economy in America is Collapsing...

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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...at least according to Vice and their source Self Financial. Though World Finance Magazine out of the UK is also reporting on it, so it may be a global phenomenon.

"The “subscribe to everything” era is unraveling. After years of stacking streaming platforms, delivery perks, and digital add-ons, Americans are pulling back hard. A new survey from Self Financial shows the average household cut its paid subscriptions from 4.1 in 2024 to just 2.8 this year. That’s a drop of nearly a third in twelve months."

netflix_envelopes.jpeg


The article focuses on video streaming and food delivery services. Apparently Apple TV+ is seeing the most rapid decline, with as many as 42% of subscribers saying they plan on canceling. Starz is second at 40.8%, and Paramount+ at 29.6%

On the food side, the likes of Caviar, Grubhub and Postmates are also in trouble, with more than half of subscribers reporting they hadn't used the services in the last month, and probably should cancel.

Most of those who either have or plan on canceling cite either increased subscription fees, increased costs of living, or crackdowns on password sharing as the main reason for their desire to cancel.

We have long talked about a bump in these subscription services resulting from people being at home during the pandemic. I hadn't been paying attention, but I thought that bump was over ages ago, but maybe this is the end of the prolonged tail of that bump?

Or maybe it is something different all together? I have long read that at least in the video streaming industry analysts have long expected some serious consolidation, which is why seemingly everyone wanted in on streaming, to get their foot in the door before it happens, so they have a shot of being one of the few that remain when it is all said and done.


I guess I'm a little bit unusual. I canceled my Netflix, the only video streaming service I ever had back in 2010. I have never had a food delivery subscription. I've never even used a food delivery service. While I have at least heard of Grubhub, I had never heard of Caviar or Postmates before.
 
I didn't even know they did subscription services for fast food delivery. I've heard of it for groceries.

It surprises me how many people pay for fast food delivery, especially the people that struggle to pay rent and bills. Paying $40 for poorly made fast food that arrives cold and 40 minutes after it's been made. No thanks, I'll make something at home way better for under $5.
 
My wife has a DoorDash subscription. It's only like $5 a month and It can pretty much offset the cost of delivery from a lot of places. At least minus tipping. Around here, there are a fair number of restaurants that hover in that fast casual range. They're a step above fast food, but they aren't necessarily the kind of place you'd want to drive to and have a meal. Meal delivery services are great for those, and they tend to show up quick, too.

As far as cancelling services, I think some of it is that the cream his risen to the top. I know the ones worth paying for vs. not these days. You don't really have a lot of home run attempts coming from services trying to make a name anymore. People are probably asking themselves "when is the last time I watched anything on Paramount+?" or "Do I really need Nintendo's online service for 1 game?"
 
I'm one of those people that's pulled back hard on these kinds of things. I've never even been one to have that many subscriptions at once either. I'd have less if I could honestly. At this point I think I have the Adobe Photoshop subscription, $20 a month, Crunchyroll to watch anime, and stupid ass Office 365 for $10 a month or whatever that costs. I've gotten pretty good about subscribing to what I need for a month or two and then cancelling it when I stop needing it. So I usually have another sub that floats between different streaming services or whatever. I do as much through Amazon as I can because their control panel for seeing what you have and cancelling shit you don't want makes this super easy.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Grubhub requires a subscription?
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They all do. It gets you discounted fees; if you use it more than once or twice a month it will pay for itself. I think at least some of the promotions are tied to the subscriptions too. Those used to be really good deals; with climbing prices at best they offset part of the fee and driver tip instead of getting you food for less than retail. (Which obviously was too good to last.)
 
I must confess ignorance on food delivery subscriptions. Had no idea such things existed. I loathe software subscriptions. If there's no option to buy, I go elsewhere. The only subscriptions that make sense to me are streaming services. I use YouTube TV and Amazon Prime.
 
Is anyone really surprised? Companies believe that customers have no choice so they jack up prices and put in restrictions, as they always do. Netflix now costs $18 a month with restrictions on who can log into the account. Content gets removed all the time due to licensing fees. Netflix used to be the only streaming service and now you have a couple dozen.

People didn't stop watching their favorite shows, but instead just pirate. You don't even need to download anything as there are now streaming piracy sites, which makes it even harder to go after pirates. Piracy has evolved and consumers are no longer backed into a corner in terms of access to their entertainment.

View: https://youtu.be/H6Oac6mtytg?si=BcwOadTgYtadxH50
 
You definitely don't have to use food delivery subscriptions. They're basically like Amazon Prime was before they added streaming. You're paying a smaller one-time fee to reduce other future fees if you use the service often.
 
I'd bet that a lot of people are dropping some of these services since going woke. I don't want make this a soapbox thread but the lack of good content for streaming services is part of the reason why people are dropping them. Netflix adaptations of just about everything are so bad they've been meme'ed to death. I think people are sick of a lot of the content and have figured out there is little value in keeping a Netflix or Hulu subscription all year round anymore.
 
DukenukemX said:
Is anyone really surprised? Companies believe that customers have no choice so they jack up prices and put in restrictions, as they always do. Netflix now costs $18 a month with restrictions on who can log into the account. Content gets removed all the time due to licensing fees. Netflix used to be the only streaming service and now you have a couple dozen.

People didn't stop watching their favorite shows, but instead just pirate. You don't even need to download anything as there are now streaming piracy sites, which makes it even harder to go after pirates. Piracy has evolved and consumers are no longer backed into a corner in terms of access to their entertainment.

View: https://youtu.be/H6Oac6mtytg?si=BcwOadTgYtadxH50
Click to expand...


That reminds me of this comic/meme:

piracy - hello old friend.png
 
From streaming services to software, I've been dropping as much as I can. Software? Just let me buy it outright. I'm done with subscriptions. They were fine when there were one or two. Now, it's flooded and every app, software title, streaming service, etc. has a subscription to go with it.
 
DukenukemX said:
Is anyone really surprised? Companies believe that customers have no choice so they jack up prices and put in restrictions, as they always do. Netflix now costs $18 a month with restrictions on who can log into the account. Content gets removed all the time due to licensing fees. Netflix used to be the only streaming service and now you have a couple dozen.

People didn't stop watching their favorite shows, but instead just pirate. You don't even need to download anything as there are now streaming piracy sites, which makes it even harder to go after pirates. Piracy has evolved and consumers are no longer backed into a corner in terms of access to their entertainment.

View: https://youtu.be/H6Oac6mtytg?si=BcwOadTgYtadxH50
Click to expand...


Zarathustra[H] said:
That reminds me of this comic/meme:

View attachment 757125
Click to expand...
The proliferation of dubiously legal, and properly criminal streaming apps and even for-pay services for Android is absolutely staggering over the last five years.
 
Dan_D said:
I'd bet that a lot of people are dropping some of these services since going woke. I don't want make this a soapbox thread but the lack of good content for streaming services is part of the reason why people are dropping them. Netflix adaptations of just about everything are so bad they've been meme'ed to death. I think people are sick of a lot of the content and have figured out there is little value in keeping a Netflix or Hulu subscription all year round anymore.
Click to expand...
I'm more than happy to buy quality content, on HD or UHD BD. Otherwise...

Jolly Roger.PNG
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
...at least according to Vice and their source Self Financial. Though World Finance Magazine out of the UK is also reporting on it, so it may be a global phenomenon.





I guess I'm a little bit unusual.
Click to expand...

Me too.
Zarathustra[H] said:
I canceled my Netflix, the only video streaming service I ever had back in 2010.
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Never subscribed to Netflix, nor to any other entertainment sub. Only subscrtiptions are email, Internet and basic TV cable.
Zarathustra[H] said:
I have never had a food delivery subscription.
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None of those. As long as I can drive to the supermarket, who needs those subs.
Zarathustra[H] said:
, I had never heard of Caviar or Postmates before.
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Never heard of those.
 
Domingo said:
I think some of it is that the cream his risen to the top
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probably because Netflix last quarter was its best by a good amount, Amazon prime is more than 1 per household in the US, ChatGPT got to 20 millions paid subs really fast, etc... (i think youtube is growing fast)

DukenukemX said:
Companies believe that customers have no choice so they jack up prices and put in restrictions, as they always do. Netflix now costs $18 a month with restrictions on who can log into the account. Content gets removed all the time due to licensing fees. Netflix used to be the only streaming service and now you have a couple dozen.
Click to expand...
Netflix used to be purely for already fully moneytised content, paid TV was 200 billions a year business, in the USA alone 10-12 years ago TV was almost a 150 billion a year business, you do not replace it by 80 millions account at $8 a month (that not 9 billion a year) and add the movie industry in it has well...

DukenukemX said:
People didn't stop watching their favorite shows
Click to expand...
per definition as it would not be a favorite show... but they watch show way less than before, tiktok and other short form content acquiring more and more attention
 
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Some subscriptions are money grabs and nothing but, it's plain to see. Like remote starting of vehicles is only available if you subscribe. F that noise. It wasn't paid for before (granted it was basically line of sight only, but the majority of users are going to start a car sitting outside their house before work) and shouldn't be now.
 
Mad Maxx said:
I must confess ignorance on food delivery subscriptions. Had no idea such things existed. I loathe software subscriptions. If there's no option to buy, I go elsewhere. The only subscriptions that make sense to me are streaming services. I use YouTube TV and Amazon Prime.
Click to expand...
Same here, Youtube TV and Amazon Prime are my only subscriptions. I dropped Adobe Photoshop when they went subscription mode and found a decent replacement that could handle my needs (Affinity Photo).
 
Domingo said:
You definitely don't have to use food delivery subscriptions. They're basically like Amazon Prime was before they added streaming. You're paying a smaller one-time fee to reduce other future fees if you use the service often.
Click to expand...
People finally woke up and realized why when they door dash they have no money.

Twisted Kidney said:
The proliferation of dubiously legal, and properly criminal streaming apps and even for-pay services for Android is absolutely staggering over the last five years.
Click to expand...
This is probably one of the many reasons why Google is trying to prevent side loading on Android.
she-doesnt-know-v0-mo2piniqvgaf1.jpg

LukeTbk said:
Netflix used to be purely for already fully moneytised content, paid TV was 200 billions a year business, in the USA alone 10-12 years ago TV was almost a 150 billion a year business, you do not replace it by 80 millions account at $8 a month (that not 9 billion a year) and add the movie industry in it has well...
Click to expand...
10-12 years ago people were paying over $200 per month for what was essentially crap TV. Even if TV was good, it wasn't worth over $200 per month. The cable TV industry had put consumers into a corner with little choice. Even if you went with Satellite TV, it wasn't much cheaper and you still needed an internet connection. Direct TV had a deal with AT&T DSL which was just an inferior experience over Cable. You couldn't go to a Cable TV's competitor because they didn't exist. What consumers realized is that TV sucks and they just ended up pirating content and switched to YouTube and Netflix. Which worked for a while until Disney, Hulu, and etc have now made their own streaming services. To make matters worse, they kept creeping up the prices and starting putting ads. Doesn't matter if the paid TV industry made $200 billion a year because it was done through putting consumers into a corner.

View: https://youtu.be/qkfski7P7VM?si=QgIpa8ppOy8kMHo7
per definition as it would not be a favorite show... but they watch show way less than before, tiktok and other short form content acquiring more and more attention
Click to expand...
I wouldn't put much value into TikTok after Oracle plans to control it. People will move away from it as Oracle regulates what can and can't be said on TikTok.
 
DukenukemX said:
10-12 years ago people were paying over $200 per month for what was essentially crap TV. Even if TV was good, it wasn't worth over $200 per month.
Click to expand...
sure sure, but cost of content grew over that reality and cost a fortune, it was always the case outside an hetacomb on the content size that price would go up for the OTT replacement of cable (or the ads would come back and so on) it is not like Hollywood and others on the TV side had software margin outthere.

DukenukemX said:
I wouldn't put much value into TikTok after Oracle plans to control it. People will move away from it as Oracle regulates what can and can't be said on TikTok.
Click to expand...
as long has they can keep using TikTok AI models... it could work, but that just a show in, for youtube and the tens of popular short dopamine hit platform, the smarthphone ecosystem and so on that achieve to keep people from TVs. Video game is an other big one, they became forever and really engaging games.

Not sure the very young tend to have many favorite shows like in the past (or that Oracle will regulate more than Bytedance they have really strict control on tittok, so much it developped some novelangue with all the alternate words use for the banned subject).
 
Ur_Mom said:
From streaming services to software, I've been dropping as much as I can. Software? Just let me buy it outright. I'm done with subscriptions. They were fine when there were one or two. Now, it's flooded and every app, software title, streaming service, etc. has a subscription to go with it.
Click to expand...
I've had to switch backup programs twice, each after the company switched to subscription only, with no perpetual license. Both Acronis and Macrium adopted the same tactic.
 
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zerogg said:
I've had to switch backup programs twice, each after the company switched to subscription only, with no perpetual license. Both Acronis and Macrium adopted the same tactic.
Click to expand...

What are you using these days? Macrium has been my go to for years.
 
LukeTbk said:
Netflix used to be purely for already fully moneytised content, paid TV was 200 billions a year business, in the USA alone 10-12 years ago TV was almost a 150 billion a year business, you do not replace it by 80 millions account at $8 a month (that not 9 billion a year) and add the movie industry in it has well...
Click to expand...

I remember getting into a lot of arguments years ago and frequently being dogpiled by disagreers for saying that Netflix would only be crazy cheap when it was seen as extra money on top of a cable subscription by the media companies. When it became a replacement they'd insist on fees similar in size to what they charged cable companies per user for access to all their content; a number that was a majority of the cost of the TV bill.

If you add the cost of all the major paid streaming services and stand alone sportsball ones together now you end up with something that's a good size chunk of a cable TV bill; meanwhile internet prices have edged up, at least in part I'm sure because the cable companies are charging more to replace the income they used to get from the infrastructure part of their TV bill (most of which doesn't go away when customers go internet only).

Sometimes I hate being right.
 
Ranulfo said:
What are you using these days? Macrium has been my go to for years.
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I've been using Veeam Agent for the last few years. Free and works fine (if slightly confusing to initially setup); but Veeam has a similarly named enterprise product and a website that makes it unclear which you want as a consumer; and they insist on an email address to give a download link (not unreasonable for the enterprise product, but annoying on the consumer side).

Edit: I just discovered there's a new major version out. Now I need to make sure it's still a sane product before installing (or not and revoking this recommendation).
 
Subscription has become a plague and when we have stuff like heated seats in your own car getting locked behind subscription fee, more and more people have come to realise that they are being ripped off.
 
DanNeely said:
I remember getting into a lot of arguments years ago and frequently being dogpiled by disagreers for saying that Netflix would only be crazy cheap when it was seen as extra money on top of a cable subscription by the media companies. When it became a replacement they'd insist on fees similar in size to what they charged cable companies per user for access to all their content; a number that was a majority of the cost of the TV bill.

If you add the cost of all the major paid streaming services and stand alone sportsball ones together now you end up with something that's a good size chunk of a cable TV bill; meanwhile internet prices have edged up, at least in part I'm sure because the cable companies are charging more to replace the income they used to get from the infrastructure part of their TV bill (most of which doesn't go away when customers go internet only).

Sometimes I hate being right.
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There's sure to be a lesson here for those who buy into the "ai" sales pitches these days.

Can't quite grasp what it could be, though.
 
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I have one subscription: Walmart Plus. It is a major time saver shopping for groceries and they have great prices.
 
I have Youtube TV that I share with my Dad since he is retired on fixed income, but with all the Regional Sports Networks being pulled and probably another price hike I may eventually cancel it. My fiancé and I split the Prime since we live in the same household, and network/Disney + bundle was put in as a promo to my Verizon plan which made it a wash. I do agree that we are being Nickle and dimed to death for crappy products and honestly the only food I regularly order out for is my local Chinese take out or pizza joint, but like others I rather cook at home and save the money.
 
Not really tired of subscriptions since I generally don't have any I pay for myself.

Netflix - dropped when they split into streaming and DVD separate plans.
Prime - I was added into the Friends and Family thing which is just now ending after 10 or 15 years where Prime shipping was free, but I don't get access to streaming or the music service. I may pick up the year for $15.99 for the retention promo just to have the free shipping otherwise will just have family order who do have Prime.
Kindle Unlimited - This is about the only one I would pay for since I read a lot of books on it, but I usually get a year sub as a gift.
Spotify/Pandora - I generally get gifted one or the other during the year, but when no sub I just bounce back and forth when ads come on. My previous cars had a 3.5mm aux I would just plug in a iPod Classic. If I get annoyed with the commercials, I will just add my music to Plex and run Plexamp or go back to podcasts.

I have never subbed to any of the other streaming services. I think I have Disney+, Hulu. and ESPN through my Verizon plan, but never used them though my brother does since we split a plan.

I do still pay for cable though no premium channels and use my own hardware which cuts down on the price heavily. I have TiVos with lifetime and a ton of storage so everything I record just gets saved to my server if I don't watch it before a set number of hours. I watch less and less though since the pandemic story lines, and more and more shows these days I have no interest in.

Never used a food delivery service intentionally. I used it once by accident when I ordered free delivery from a local place when I my car was in the shop overnight and hadn't made it to the grocery. It ended up being Door Dash and I haven't ordered from them again. I live less than 5 miles away and it took him 45 minutes after arriving for my food since he waited for other orders and then delivered them first so my food was cold.
 
your verizon plan is probably a paid subscription, I suspect those 2.1 per household exclude a bunch of subs (probably internet, cable, phone plan, electricity for sure, etc...)
 
Dan_D said:
I'd bet that a lot of people are dropping some of these services since going woke. I don't want make this a soapbox thread but the lack of good content for streaming services is part of the reason why people are dropping them. Netflix adaptations of just about everything are so bad they've been meme'ed to death. I think people are sick of a lot of the content and have figured out there is little value in keeping a Netflix or Hulu subscription all year round anymore.
Click to expand...
This, Netflix used to have some great content they made but it seems less and less, I tend to find myself watching more foreign shows on netflix that "american" ones as they seem to be a bit better.

But even with that, it is just more of the same over and over and over.
 
brennok said:
Not really tired of subscriptions since I generally don't have any I pay for myself.
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The only subscription I have is a VPN and it's paying for it self multiple times over.
Netflix - dropped when they split into streaming and DVD separate plans.
Prime - I was added into the Friends and Family thing which is just now ending after 10 or 15 years where Prime shipping was free, but I don't get access to streaming or the music service. I may pick up the year for $15.99 for the retention promo just to have the free shipping otherwise will just have family order who do have Prime.
Kindle Unlimited - This is about the only one I would pay for since I read a lot of books on it, but I usually get a year sub as a gift.
Spotify/Pandora - I generally get gifted one or the other during the year, but when no sub I just bounce back and forth when ads come on. My previous cars had a 3.5mm aux I would just plug in a iPod Classic. If I get annoyed with the commercials, I will just add my music to Plex and run Plexamp or go back to podcasts.
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There are a lot of other dirty tricks you can do if you somehow wanted to stay as a paying subscription customer. That VPN can help get a discount in some streaming services if you pretend you're from another country. Amazon Prime will be cut in half if you know someone with a EBT card, and just enter it in. They don't need to know. As for music there's YouTube and it works great with Revanced.
I do still pay for cable though no premium channels and use my own hardware which cuts down on the price heavily.
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Why have a cable plan? Doesn't sound like you don't have subscriptions.
 
I got rid of Netflix when they cracked down on password sharing. I shared the account with my parents but in a different household, it honestly wasn't worth the cost for me alone. Other than that, I subscribe to a VPN.
 
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