When Netflix transitioned into a streaming service in 2007, it was groundbreaking for the industry. For a small monthly fee, you could consume practically every television show or movie you could want. It also marked the first harbinger of the end for cable as we know it. The impact that Netflix had on how we consume entertainment doesn’t even need to be stated. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Disney+ are just four of the countless services out there that seek to streamline the process by which consumers take in content. In a way, it’s become a lot like cable in its own right, where people can pay for different bundles that come with different streaming services.
However, it’s brought many of us into situations where we don’t realize exactly how much we are paying for streaming. Each individual service is marketed at a somewhat low rate that appears to be a bargain, and as a result people get trapped in situations where they’re paying for several different services at the same time. My brother recently was subscribed to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and HBO Max. For the ad-free versions of these subscriptions, he was paying upwards of $60 per month, and only realized this when he was about to add Disney+ to his arsenal of subscriptions.
Cable is almost a foreign concept at this point, but that’s only because streaming services have made cable almost obsolete. I’m not saying that these are evil and we should stay away from them; I’ve used Game Pass for years and I’m not about to stop now. But try to keep a conscious eye on what exactly you watch on a regular basis. I haven’t watched an HBO show since “Game of Thrones.” My PlayStation sees minimal use, but for some reason, I still buy their monthly online subscription, and that’s a problem. While everyone is entitled to do what they want with their money, try to keep a conscious eye out for whether or not you are truly getting your money’s worth of subscriptions.
