Streaming services came and stole the spotlight away from cable subscriptions. They started as a convenient and cheap alternative to the confusing and often overpriced cable packages. Nowadays, the two are more alike than not.
New streaming platforms seem to pop up by the day. Instead of sharing content, they hoard it, so it's only available on one service.
As a result, the choice of streaming services is overwhelming, and the cost of subscribing to them all is prohibitive. Are streaming services no longer the solution, but the problem? Have they become too much like cable? Let's explore.
There Are Too Many Streaming Services
Streaming services are already abundant, but that doesn't prevent new ones from popping up. It feels as though every week, a new service gets announced.
You have the most well-known ones, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, and HBO Max. There's also Peacock, which is NBCUniversal's streaming service, and Paramount+, which is ViacomCBS's.
Then there's streaming TV services like Philo, Funimation and Crunchyroll that gear towards anime fans, and more.
It's worsened by the fact that each service aims to entice you with original content, exclusive to the platform. If you subscribe to every streaming service waving new or nostalgic content at you, you'll find yourself broke pretty fast.
Not to mention, it's impossible to consume all the content they offer. Netflix alone has thousands of movies and shows that it produces annually, not counting the movies and shows it pays for the rights for.
There are so many streaming services currently available. Why, with all this overabundance, do these companies keep putting out more services out of their hats? Of course, the answer is money.
What's the Problem With Streaming Services?
As already mentioned, it's pricey to subscribe to multiple paid streaming services at once (though there are free streaming services). Even if you split the cost with others, it still adds up; it's a serious monthly commitment.
However, if you're a fan of certain shows and want to keep up with them, you find yourself backed into a corner. The only way to enjoy your favorite shows is to cough up the money. Or, perhaps you could try sharing passwords for Netflix with people in your circle.
Disney+ launched at the end of 2019 and quickly amassed over 100 million subscribers. Why? Well, it's not because everyone was thrilled at the idea of watching old Disney animations.
Disney+ began producing original content like Marvel TV shows and Star Wars spin-offs that only played on its platform. Also, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the live-action adaptation of Mulan couldn't get played at theaters, Disney asked its subscribers to pay $30 for the pleasure of seeing it. That's $30 on top of the subscription fee they already pay for the streaming service.
Netflix also has a huge number of TV series it produces that are exclusive to the service, with worldwide phenomenons like The Witcher and Stranger Things. Elsewhere, Hulu has The Handmaid's Tale, HBO has Game of Thrones and its spin-offs. Amazon has The Boys, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and a Lord of the Rings series.
All these shows either blew up after they aired or created hype when they got announced as being in production. Naturally, people want to keep up with them all, but to do that, they have to keep up with multiple subscriptions.
Let's imagine that each streaming service is a flat $10. If you want to enjoy the shows mentioned, you'd have to maintain five different subscriptions, which would cost you $50 every month.
That's a lot, and it's ridiculous to pay so much for five different services knowing that all you care about from each of them are a couple of shows and maybe the occasional movie.
Streaming Services vs. Cable: A Battle Reignited
In the days when streaming services didn't exist yet, people had cable. Cable was annoying and expensive, which is why there are so many alternatives to cable.
If you wanted to watch a sports event like a particular boxing match or a soccer tournament, they usually played on specific channels—ones that weren't included in the basic package. So, to watch sports for one night or two weeks only, you had to pay to subscribe to that channel for a whole month.
If you didn't want the added cost to your cable bill, then you'd have to unsubscribe after the event ended. But then, when the next one popped up, you'd find yourself in the same predicament. So, you'd have to choose between paying for a channel you only view maybe twice a month or find yourself doing the same dance described above every time there's an event that interests you.
Also, the basic cable package used to come with very few channels that actually had good content. So, if you wanted to have a good movie-watching channel to view, you'd have to either price up your monthly cable package or add a specific channel subscription on top of your bill.
People were more than fed up with cable by the time streaming services started to become a thing.
Streaming services were a cheaper alternative that gave you access to more movies and shows than you could hope to consume. But then, as time went on, more and more choices began appearing. And now, choosing between the different options seems almost impossible. So, again, you find yourself forced to pay for a service that you only use for one or two things.
Unfortunately, streaming services seem to have become the problem they got created to fix.
Is Streaming Worth the Monthly Investment?
Streaming services compete with one another, producing enticing original content that they then keep on their platforms. So paying for several streaming services each month becomes an investment. But is it one worth making?
Naturally, that depends on your budget and how much time you actually spend consuming content. If you have the time and money to spend on several services at once, it might be worth getting all the ones that contain your favorite shows, or try to find them in a bundle to save money. But that's hardly a long-term solution.
The fact remains that streaming services have become the new cable, at least in the eyes of many users. Once upon a time, the joke was that you paid for cable with over two hundred channels and had nothing to watch. Now the joke has morphed into you paying for several streaming services with hundreds of hours of consumable content, and yet you still choose to rewatch the same five shows on repeat.
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