A new survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers by Reviews.com (opens in new tab) provides some good news for pioneering services like Netflix while highlighting some serious problems for the overall industry regarding subscription fatigue, password sharing and fickle subscribers who are cancelling subscriptions at alarming rates.
On the positive side, some pioneering streaming services continue to maintain consumer interest despite growing streaming subscription fatigue. About 43% of U.S. consumers named Netflix as the service they would choose if they could only have one service, more than double those choosing Prime Video (17%), Hulu (16%), Peacock (8%), HBO Max (7%), and Paramount+ (5%).
As streaming choices over the past 2 years have exploded, the survey also found that consumers are overwhelmed with choice – and not just from the amount of content itself, but the amount of streaming subscriptions to choose from.
That helped convince 39% to cancel a service in the last six months and 55% to subscribe to a new service. Top reasons for canceling were cutting back on monthly expenses (44%), followed by not watching enough (37%), using a different streaming service more often (9%) and favorite shows no longer available (6%).
While Netflix was the most valued service, it was also the most canceled, with 21% reporting that they had dropped their subscription in the last six months. Hulu was the second most dropped (20%), followed by Peacock (14%) and HBO Max (13%).
Password sharing also remains rampant, with nearly two in four reporting that they shared a login.
The complete report is available here (opens in new tab).