More Consumers Mixing Paid, Free Services For Entertainment

American consumers are “piecing together” their own media and entertainment experience from a growing variety of options, according to this year’s Digital media trends survey from Deloitte.

While last year’s survey showed consumers had started to take control over their own entertainment experience, now they are moving further in this direction, selecting which services among pay TV, streaming video, music, and gaming options they find most valuable. But they often need to cobble together multiple services—from paid to free, ad-supported options—to watch all of their favorite programs. Still, few would trade their newfound freedom for the limited options of the past.

Streaming services have quickly become one of Americans’ preferred ways to consume video programming. For the first time in the survey, more respondents have at least one streaming video subscription (69 percent) than have a traditional pay TV subscription (65 percent).

But “streaming services versus traditional pay TV” is not an either/or proposition for many: Consumers often want both. Forty-three percent of US households now subscribe to both pay TV and streaming video services. For live TV news, sports, and TV shows, most consumers still turn to traditional pay TV networks, although live TV streaming services are gaining traction.

In addition to watching a lot of video, consumers also find time to listen to music and play video games. Penetration of music streaming services rose to 41 percent, a 58 percent increase from last year. Younger consumers, in particular, put music in the “must-have” category: Close to 60 percent of Gen Z and millennial consumers subscribe to a music streaming service

According to Deloitte, voice-enabled digital assistants, such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, could soon change how people engage with media content of all kinds. But not quite yet.

Ownership of voice-enabled home digital assistants, or smart speakers, grew 140 percent this year, from 15 percent in 2017 to 36 percent in 2018. The rapid rise of smart speaker ownership is due in part to their low price, and to the intuitive way they help people play their favorite music. This connection to music could be why consumers who use digital assistants say they interact with digital assistants more on home devices (42 percent of the time) than they do on smartphones (34 percent of the time).

Outside of playing music, digital assistants have not yet found their killer app. Just 18 percent of consumers say they engage with a digital assistant daily. This could change fast, especially if they become instrumental in helping consumers find video content.