The cost of living is rising alongside increases to petrol prices, mortgages, and pretty much everything else, but we’re still spending a lot on entertainment services.
As the year 2022 draws to a close, you’ll lose count of the number of things costing you more money than before. Mortgages are going up due to interest rate increases, petrol is going up, and food is going up, too.
Phone services are going up, and even the cost of video game consoles, as Sony adds $50 to the cost of its PlayStation 5, even if it’s next to impossible to find locally.
Entertainment services are seemingly going up in price, too, but even though that’s happening, we are apparently making room for those costs, at least based on some research being released this week by analysis firm Telsyte.
In fact, by the end of June this year, Australians have subscribed to a good 23.4 million streaming video services, up from 19 million recorded the same time last year. Services from that number included Netflix with a staggering 6.3 million subscribers, while Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ followed closely behind with 4.1 million and 3 million respectively, with Stan, Kaye Sports, Binge, and Australia’s latest arrival of Paramount+ in the list at the end.
It’s a huge number of subscriptions, and one that Telsyte says now sees over 70 percent of Australian homes having access to any least one video on demand service.
And it’s a similar situation for music, with 15.7 million subscriptions in Australia, led by Spotify, Google’s YouTube Music, and Apple Music, with Amazon Music getting in there, too.
Games are also making a dent, as gaming services pop up in Australia.
While Sony has only recently launched three tiers to its PlayStation service, it has offered the one standard PS Plus tier for a number of years (now “Essentials”), with Xbox’s Game Pass Ultimate catering for the other side of major games including a cloud Xbox gaming service, plus the mobile gaming services of Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass.
As a result of these services, Telsyte tracks gaming services at 8.3 million subscriptions in Australia, expecting as many as 14 million subscriptions by the end of June 2026.
“Video game subscriptions offer incredible value to gamers and are set to rapidly change the games industry like music and video before it,” said Alvin Lee, Senior Analyst at Telsyte.
Interestingly, while the cost of services isn’t insignificant, only one in four Australians cancelled at least one service in the past year, though one in three is interesting in the possibility of more affordable plans, such as those supported by ads.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, almost half of those subscribing are expecting the price of streaming video services to increase, possibly because everything else is going up in price, as well.
That’ll make these services yet one more essential they’ll likely aim to keep, alongside their mobile services, but with everything going up, it could see more people hitting the pause button and re-evaluating alongside.
