OPINION: The price of streamed content will keep going up, and there is no stopping it
Rain
With the rising costs of streamed content, consumers can feel like they’re drowning with no way out.
Nov 7, 2022
Streaming services started out as a revolutionary idea that completely outdid cable. Now there’s a streaming service for anything and everything, and consumers are suffering.
According to nfl.com, July 25, 2022, saw the release of NFL+, the streaming service of the NFL. Fans can watch preseason games, games currently broadcasting, and game archives from up to 2009.
This would be great if there weren’t already a dozen other services that could stream sports. The NFL could have partnered with ESPN+ or any other service, but since these corporations are money hungry and desperate, they make their own service.
I despise when a new streaming service is announced. When I first heard of Disney+ I was excited until I realized that I had to pay more because Disney was pulling out all of their content from other platforms, forcing consumers to pay more for different types of content.
Prices of streaming services are also steadily rising, namely Netflix. According to nerdist.com, Netflix will be enforcing that households sharing passwords will have to pay an extra fee for an extra household. In the article it says millions of households are sharing passwords, meaning millions more memberships and millions more cash.
Streaming services blew cable out of the water when they first started out. All of your favorite content in one place, without having to pay for dozens of different channels for one show. Today, they are one and the same, different content on different platforms that you need to pay different prices for, costing almost the same amount of cable.
According to move.org, a starter cable plan could range from $44.99-$74.99/mo. The cost of the top five streaming services, Netflix, Prime Video, Spotify, and HBO Max, combined cost about $65 a month (not including tax).
The terrible thing about this is that as a consumer you can do virtually nothing to stop it. Big companies will want to make more profit without caring about quality content for audiences and will keep making more and more streaming services so you can watch that one decent original show.