Americans spent $170 on average on streaming TV services in 2019, a 30% increase since 2017, when they spent $130
Brian X. Chen / New York Times : Tweets: @abnormalreturns , @karlbode , and @michellemanafy Tweets: Tadas Viskanta / @abnormalreturns : Some additional info on doing a ‘subscription audit’: https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Karl Bode / @karlbode : One of my favorite hobbies is watching major outlets write about the video streaming space while never mentioning piracy. There's an inherent editorial belief that even mentioning it somehow condones it. https://twitter.com/... Michelle Manafy / @michellemanafy : In 2019, we each spent $640 on digital subscriptions like streaming video and music services, cloud storage, dating apps and online productivity tools,... https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Brian X. Chen's 2019 tally — $170 per person per year on streaming TV, up 30% from $130 in 2017 — captured the moment households began stacking services instead of replacing one with another. Michelle Manafy's companion figure, $640 per person in 2019 across all digital subscriptions, shows streaming was the biggest single driver of a broader subscription pile-up, and Tadas Viskanta's 'subscription audit' framing turned the story into a consumer checklist.
The arc since has run in one direction: the average household's streaming spend kept climbing through 2020, and by 2023 a basket of the top US services hit $87 a month — above the average cable package. The 2019 article is the early data point in what became a cost-convergence story.
First-order effects
- Households face a stacking bill that compounds with each new service launch, pushing writers like Viskanta to prescribe periodic subscription audits as the practical response.
- Karl Bode's complaint that coverage of rising streaming costs ignores piracy highlights the pressure valve consumers use when the stack gets expensive — a dynamic the article's commentariat flagged in real time.
Second-order effects
- Once streaming's total cost crossed cable's — the 2023 basket at $87/month versus $83 for cable — the core price argument for cord-cutting inverted, forcing services to compete on churn-prone standalone value; Antenna's data shows monthly cancellation rates rising to 6.3% by November 2023, with a quarter of customers dropping three or more services in two years.
- Rising stack costs push suppliers (studios, rights holders) toward price hikes and ad tiers on their own services, since each standalone increase feeds the very churn that erodes their subscriber base.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, streaming reassembles the cable bundle it dismantled — which is why media executives from Brian Roberts to Ted Sarandos now frame the industry's future around rebundling and advertising rather than unlimited standalone growth.
- The subscription-scale trap becomes the industry's defining constraint: services that grew by adding standalone subscribers must now choose between price increases that drive cancellation and consolidation into fewer, bigger bundles.
The trend: Streaming TV pricing is converging back toward cable economics, trading the cord-cutting price advantage for a rebundled, ad-supported model.