New Streaming Subs Drop Significantly

The amount of people buying a new subscription is significantly down from last year as pandemic restrictions ease, according to The Wrap citing Kantar Media data.

Amazon Prime Video and Discovery+ have signed up the most new streaming customers during the most recent quarter.

Among those who were first-time subscribers to a streaming service in the U.S., 17.1% picked Prime Video, largely because of its combination with Amazon Prime, which offers tons of perks on shipping and Whole Foods discounts. Newcomer Discovery+ grabbed 10.3% of new subscribers, with soon-to-be sister streaming service HBO Max garnering 10.2% of new U.S. subs.

The findings were part of Kantar’s quarterly Entertainment On-Demand reports.

Discovery+ shouldn’t be that much of a surprise — as the newest streaming service, it has the most ground to make up in terms of customers. It only has around 13 million subs as of last quarter. Amazon topping the list is more impressive considering Prime Video was among the first pioneers of the streaming era. Kantar says Prime Video is still benefiting from the rise in overall Prime subscriptions taken out during the past year of lockdown.

Amazon has 200 million Prime customers around the world, and former CEO Jeff Bezos said that “more than” 175 million of those watch Prime Video.

Behind HBO Max was Hulu with 8.6% of new subs, followed by Disney+ with 8.2% and Netflix with 6%. For Netflix, it was the streaming leader’s fourth-straight quarter of declines, which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering its U.S. subscriber count has been fairly stagnant over the last couple of years as it has focused more on international growth. Disney+ has declined in this metric for the last two quarters, which goes along with its own slowing growth.

Overall, the number of people signing up for a new streaming service was down dramatically compared to the same time last year, when pretty much all of the country was in some form of a lockdown due to the pandemic. The percentage of U.S. households that took out a new subscription was 3.9% during the second quarter of 2021, down from the 12.9% that did so in the year-ago quarter. Kantar said this was the steepest drop in new subscribers since it’s been tracking.