Streaming Without Paying for Everything at Once

Streaming was once the cheap alternative to cable. For many households it has become a cable-sized bill spread across five or six services, each with its own price rises. This chapter shows how to keep watching what you want while paying for far fewer services at any one time: rotating, planning with a simple content calendar, choosing ad-supported tiers and bundles carefully, and staying within the sharing rules that services now enforce.

Why the streaming bill grew

Three changes turned a single cheap subscription into a stack of them.

• Content split up. Studios that once licensed their films and series to one big service now keep much of it for their own platforms. Watching a handful of favourite shows can mean paying several companies.
• Prices rise regularly. Most large services have raised prices several times, and a rise applies to existing subscribers automatically.
• Tiers multiplied. Services now sell ad-supported, standard and premium plans, and some reserve features such as higher resolution or more simultaneous streams for the top tier.

The result is that the default, keeping every service you have ever wanted something from, has become expensive. If you want a benchmark for your own household, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Surveys report what households spend on audio and visual equipment and services, by income and household type. The good news is that streaming is one of the easiest categories to change: there is no contract, no equipment to return, and you can come back at any time.

Rotation: one or two services at a time

Rotation means subscribing to a service for the month or two when you will actually watch it, then cancelling and moving to the next. Most people watch a small number of things at once, so they rarely need more than one or two services active.

For example, four services kept all year at a combined $64 a month cost $768 a year. Rotating through the same four, one at a time, at about $16 a month costs $192 a year, and still gives you every service for three months of the year.

Rotation works best with a few practical habits:

• Cancel the day you subscribe. Many services keep your access until the end of the paid period after you cancel. Cancelling at once means you never pay for a month you forgot about. Check the service's cancellation screen to confirm how it handles this.
• Binge, then leave. A series you would watch over a season can usually be watched in a month once it has fully released.
• Keep your profile. Most services keep your watch history and lists for a period after you cancel, so returning is painless. The period varies by service.
• Return when there is a reason. A new season, a film you have been waiting for, or a live event, not simply because a month has passed.

A simple content calendar

A content calendar is just a list of what you want to watch, where it is, and when it will be there. It turns rotation from a guess into a plan.

1. List what you want to watch in the next three to six months: series you follow, new seasons, films, sport.
2. Note where each title is available. Free watchlist apps and websites that track streaming availability can tell you which service carries a title in your country.
3. Group the list by service and order the services by when the things you want are released.
4. Assign months. Give each service the month or two when the most titles you want are available, and leave the rest of the year without it.

Revisit the list every couple of months. Release dates move, and titles leave services as well as arrive.

Ad-supported tiers, bundles and perks

Ad-supported tiers can lower the price of a service you keep all year, sometimes considerably. The trade is your time and attention: a few minutes of advertising an hour, and sometimes fewer features or downloads. For a service you watch occasionally, the cheaper tier is often the better deal; for one you watch heavily, the ad-free plan may be worth it.

Bundles combine several services at a combined discount. As chapter 5 explained, a bundle is a saving only if you would otherwise pay for most of what is in it, and only for the months you would keep all of them. A bundle can make rotation harder, because you cannot drop one part.

Perks from other providers. Some phone plans, internet plans, credit cards and shopping memberships include a streaming service or a credit toward one. Before you pay for a service directly, check whether you already have it through another bill. Equally, check whether a perk is a time-limited promotion that will start billing at full price.

Sharing accounts: the rules have changed

Several of the largest services now limit an account to one household and charge an extra fee to add members who live elsewhere, or block viewing outside the account's home. Sharing a login with friends who live somewhere else may break the terms of service and can lead to restrictions on the account.

Within those rules, there are still legitimate ways to share:

• Household plans cover everyone who lives with you, often with separate profiles.
• Paid extra-member options, where a service offers them, can be cheaper than a second full subscription for someone outside the household.
• Splitting the bill within the household is simple with a shared spreadsheet or a bill-splitting app.

Check each service's current terms before you set anything up. They have changed often in the last few years and may change again.

Live TV and sports

Live TV and sports streaming are usually the most expensive streaming subscriptions, and often the easiest to cut seasonally. Many people need a sports service only for the months of one league's season. Subscribe for the season, cancel when it ends, and set a reminder for the start of the next one. For local channels, an antenna can receive over-the-air broadcasts free in many areas.

The saving from the rotation example above is $48 a month. Invested for 10 years at about 3.9% a year after inflation, that becomes about $6,999 in today's dollars, for watching the same shows on a different schedule.