With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.
I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.
I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?
Cancelled Prime after about a month because fuck ads in a paid service. Other than that I still have all of them*, though considering cancelling Netflix and Disney+.
* I'm in Europe, so "all of them" means like 5 services, not the 50,000 US folks seem to have.
What ads? Is that something recent?
Amazon announced a couple days ago they're adding ads to all current plans and creating a new, more expensive, plan that will be ad-free.
It's not really any different from other services simply increasing the price and/or adding a cheaper plan with ads.