Sky-high prices, declining quality: What they're not telling you about the future of streaming

© Shutterstock/DANIEL CONSTANTE

On paper, everything is going well for the big streaming platforms. Netflix’s latest quarterly results are there to attest to this. The service has gained more than 5 million customers in the last three months and now has 282.7 million subscribers worldwide.

Since 2022, the company has recovered 60 million subscribers. But these brilliant statistics displayed by these entertainment giants should not blind us and this is what we will try to better understand.

A very worrying decline in perceived quality

After what some observers have perceived as a golden age of series over the last 20 years, the general public is now feeling a decline in the quality of programs offered by the major platforms. According to a study published in October by TiVo, which surveyed 4,490 people in the United States and Canada, the percentage of subscribers satisfied with the quality of content on video-on-demand services is decreasing.

In detail, 78.6% of the public considered that these platforms offered “moderate to very good” content to watch in the second quarter of 2022, this percentage is 74.5% in the second quarter of 2024.

It is even worse for advertising-funded offers which currently only collect 60.8%. The concern is all the greater because this is precisely the type of subscription that the entertainment giants intend to bet on.

Rising prices, falling investments

While Netflix, Disney+ and all their rivals are regularly increasing their prices and the trend is not about to stop, Varietyhas calculated that the main streaming services should invest less in their content between 2023 and 2026 than between 2019 and 2023.

If customers pay more and more for a product that they judge more and more negatively, discontent could quickly appear on the horizon. According to a study conducted last year by CivicScience, 39% of Netflix subscribers said they would cancel their subscription if the company increased the price of its ad-supported offering.

Piracy fueled by Netflix and rivals’ mistakes?

Consumers have weathered previous price hikes, just as they have weathered the end of account sharing. In the short term, this has meant positive numbers for the services concerned, but it may come at a cost in the future.

In a recent article, our colleagues at Forbesrecalled in this regard that the massive increase in cable subscription prices in the United States ended up encouraging customers to unsubscribe and turn to platforms. Today, this legal alternative does not exist. Distraught, Internet users could turn to an option that has never been so popular: illegal streaming and IPTV platforms.

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