Enshittification Ensures Streaming Prices Soar Faster Than Any Other Consumer Good
from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept
According to new data from the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), streaming video subscription prices jumped a whopping 29 percent year over year. That’s compared to the 2.7 percent jump in consumer costs seen more generally across other goods and services.
Of course BLS doesn’t explain why streaming video prices are soaring at such a dramatic rate. It’s something we’ve touched on repeatedly: as giant media companies increasingly consolidate, they’re trying to find new, frequently obnoxious ways to continue to goose quarterly earnings and create the illusion of perpetual growth despite a major slowdown in new subscribers.
That means significantly more ads (even if you pay for no ads). It means higher overall prices despite a decline in quality. It means layoffs, worse customer service, and companies that refuse to even host popular content they paid for because they’re too cheap to pay for residuals. It means new annoying restrictions on what you’re paying for, and companies that harass you for sharing your password with your college kid or elderly relative. It means more lazy, clickbait content catering to the lowest common denominator and less quality, thoughtful art.
It means enshittification.
And it’s going to get worse. The corrupt Trump administration is demolishing whatever is left of U.S. media consolidation limits, ensuring another massive round of harmful “growth for growth’s sake” mergers that temporarily goose earnings, create tax breaks, and badly justify outsized executive compensation, but generally make all of the existing problems in the industry worse (especially for labor and consumers).
According to the BLS, streaming and gaming subscriptions and rentals saw higher “streamflation” (read: price gouging) in 2025 than any of the other industries or services measured. The closest comparison was coffee (28 percent), which is largely soaring due to Trump’s ignorant and pointless tariffs that consumers have to pay for.
If you’re old enough, you’ve already watched this play out with traditional cable (many of the executives screwing up streaming were the same ones that screwed up traditional cable). So you know the pattern: they’ll continue to push their luck on price hikes, driving many people to free alternatives (or piracy), at which point the executives who made out like bandits blame everyone and everything but themselves.
None of this is reflected honestly by any of the media companies that cover this sort of thing, because their tendency toward honest and courageous journalism is being undermined by the same forces. Like check out this Hollywood Reporter breakdown of the issue, which they dub “streamflation.” They amusing hint at the fact there might be causes for this massive surge in pricing, but can’t get around to listing any:
Again, because enshittification doesn’t discriminate, and the same forces making streaming video more expensive and shittier are taking a hatchet to U.S. journalism and truth in service to the almighty dollar. Corporate media is incapable of reporting honesty about corporate media: there’s no money in it.
Filed Under: competition, consumer protection, consumers, enshittification, inflation, media consolidation, mergers, price hikes, streaming, tv, video
Companies: disney, netflix, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “Enshittification Ensures Streaming Prices Soar Faster Than Any Other Consumer Good”
Streaming services are an odd choice for enshittification because piracy is so trivially easy. Legit streaming services were wildly successful at first because they offered convenience and value, but as prices go up and ads worm their way in they start looking indistinguishable from the old cable regime we ran screaming from at the first opportunity.
No, copyright laws are why we can’t have nice things. Like “Popcorn Time”, which pre-dated many of the major streaming services while being considered better. These laws are all that prevent open competition, at which point a shitty business would just be a shitty soon-to-be-ex-business, as in most other areas of business.
If ..
If I wanted a shitty selection of shows, forced ads and constantly rising costs, I would have chosen cable.
On a separate happier note: my local libraries have a wonderful selection of movies and shows available on disk.
This is quite funny
What makes me laugh is that they could have easily made stuff like Netflix and HBO and premium priced services based on not trying to capture every house in the US but instead sold a good product at a sustainable price, where growth comes from a slow influx of new customers who see value in the service.
Obviously our Tech bros are so addicted to the “Market share at all costs” mindset that they’ve destroyed the idea of premium media.
HBO and other premium legacy groups could have easily adopted this, they came much later to streaming, at much lower costs then Netflix. People can then buy into the channels that give them real value.
Instead we get this…
Oh, don’t worry. The very smart or even brilliant theorists of the free market have explained ten thousand times that in a market economy, customers are guaranteed to always get the best possible deal free enterprise is practically able to give them. So while it might appear as if something like what you describe is happening, that is clearly impossible.
I mean, who are you going to believe – Milton Friedman or your lying eyes?
And this is why torrenting is back in a big way
Part of it’s about the cost — which keeps going up with no apparent limit. Part of it is about the Darth Vader approach (“I have altered the deal”). Part of it is about the crazy-quilt of services that one has to subscribe to in order to even TRY to watch sports…and even then, there are exceptions and blackouts.
But most of it’s about the annoyance. NONE of these services are willing to just sell a thing for a price and be done with it. No, they all want to recommend another thing and upsell me another thing and tell me about yet another thing and blah blah blah. It’s like buying a can of beans at the supermarket and then being hounded by the staff because WE HAVE THESE OTHER BEANS ON SALE BUY THEM BUY THEM BUY THEM NOWWWWW!!
The idea that consumers want to just buy a thing and then be left alone to actually — and I know this is a radical idea, but hear me out — enjoy the thing is apparently not within their grasp.
Re:
It doesn’t really make sense from any point of view. What does it mean to “buy” some data? 50 years ago, sure, stuff was kind of hard to copy, and so paying someone to sell a copy made sense. But once we got tape decks and VCRs, it was just people clinging to an obsolescent model. And now they’re literally sending data over the internet just like BitTorrent does, while pretending to be morally superior.
We should just admit that this stuff’s available for free to everyone, once published, and legalize it (kind of like what’s happening with drugs, way too slowly). And maybe then figure out how people can make money in entertainment, with fewer out-of-touch rich assholes involved.
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To pay money and get the data in turn.
I don’t see how “Let’s abolish the way creative people currently get paid, and then see if can maybe figure out some other way to pay them afterwards” is a particularly attractive or defensible stance to take.
“I’m going to take your food supply away – but don’t worry, a while after your food has run out, I’ll think about whether I’ll maybe try to help you somehow find some new food somewhere.”
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Normally when people buy something, they own it afterward. If someone buys a tape or disc containing data, they at least own the tape or disc and can sell that. But what people call “buying” movies and music online results in them still not owning it afterward (“all rights reserved” by the copyright holder; some courts have even called it false advertising to use the term “buy”).
And I don’t see how copyright is defensible. If someone’s business model is a monopoly that relies on restricting the free communication of everyone in the world, it simply shouldn’t exist (and a plain reading of the First Amendment would suggest that it repealed the Constitution’s copyright clause; courts have been silently ignoring that for centuries).
We know people are gonna want entertainment, and will be willing to pay for it. The current streaming platforms can even keep providing it to them in exchange for money. But, like cannabis prohibition, we should drop the pretense of legal restrictions. Anyone who wants to get stuff for free can already find “some guy” to hook them up.
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That applies only to the current business practices of a number of entertainment companies, not to the general principle of buying data.
Simple: on the grounds that it allows some people to get paid for work which would otherwise be unpaid.
Note, however, that I wasn’t mainly objecting to your anti-copyright stance, but to your glib plan of first abolishing copyright and then “maybe” trying to see if there might be some other way to pay the people who currently get paid through some form of the copyright system.
Perhaps I could get behind ending copyright, but only if the policy change would be done in such a way that first, some reliably working other system for paying creative people would get up and running, and then the old system would be abolished.
This reminds me of a political cartoon from the early 2000’s, which shows two gas stations. Station A raises their price of gas. Station B looks at that, heads to his price board, and raises it. In the last panel, Station B looks over at station A and looks smug, as if he just won a victory.
Now, it seems like all streaming services are in a race to see who can charge their customers MORE.
[Google’s AI suggests it is a Jeff Danziger comic named “gas war” from May 2004, but I’ll be darned if I can find it. How can google know about it, the name, and the date, but cannot link me the comic itself?]
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Google’s AI hallucinates like a schizophrenic on acid.
I will be voting with my feet
I canceled Netflix 2 or 3 years ago over a rate increase and a dropped show. I will be reviewing our current subscriptions and dropping stuff.
PBS passport is cheap and I don’t care about major league sports or hot dramas.
I understand that “the market” loves monopolies and rents and I’m happy to not buy their product
And when people turn to piracy because prices are insane just shout “COPYRIGHTS” and blame everyone but your own incompetence. Also, infinite growth and profits are not sustainable.
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Piracy is just another form of a black market that only exists because the legal market is dysfunctional in providing products and services in an easy way at a price people are willing to pay, especially when it comes to digital products that should have zero scarcity.
Pirate sites too
I have to subscribe to 3 such sites to get all the channels I want