If you were hoping for a respite from rising streaming subscription fees in 2025, you’re out of luck. Several streaming providers have already increased monthly and/or annual subscription rates, continuing a disappointing trend from the past few years, with no foreseeable end.
Subscribers have generally seen an uptick in how much money they spend to access streaming services. In June, Forbes reported that 44 percent of the 2,000 US streaming users it surveyed who “engage with content for at least an hour daily” said their streaming costs had increased over the prior year.
Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Media Trends report found that 48 percent of the 3,517 US consumers it surveyed said that they would cancel their favorite streaming video-on-demand service if the price went up by $5.
Similarly, in a blog post about 2025 streaming trends, consumer research firm GWI reported that 52 percent of US TV viewers believe streaming subscriptions are getting too expensive, “which is a 77 percent increase since 2020.” A GWI spkesperon told me that the data comes from GWI’s flagship dataset and surveying people from over 50 global markets. Its methodology is available here.) GWI added that globally, the top reason cited by customers who have canceled or are considering canceling a streaming service was cost (named by 39 percent of consumers), followed by price hikes (32 percent).
“Pay TV packages and inflation have increased at similar rates in recent years. But over the past two years, streaming has gotten much more expensive relative to both,” eMarketer’s report says.
Speaking to those in the U.S., Your local library has a huge collection of DVDs. Your local thrift shop and eBay have blu ray players (most of which will upscale DVDs during playback) for cheap.
Your library may also have streaming services like Kanopy and Hoopla
Mine does Blu-ray too. DVD wise they have more TV shows than I’ve heard of, cryptic ones I have heard of, anime, comedy… Almost more than the local used DVD stores.
Definitely don’t get a drive to rip them for later either, like I didn’t do with CDs back in the day.