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.
Tbf, Netflix did start auto-playing crap but then walked back on that. They do that continually - pushing the boundaries past what people are willing to take, then a few months later dialing it WAY down, but still forward from where it started. Although more recently they did get it to a nice place imho - if you have a friend with a subscription, check it out and you may be pleasantly surprised. I am not saying that it makes up for the loss of content that they used to have, or that it is a fully good experience, but it is a LOT better than it was there for awhile (so: not that you would consider ever going back, but at least you would know:-).
I had a boss like that. What a fucking dickhead.
Had.