I’ve been writing a monthly streaming preview column for MarketWatch for a little over a year now, advising readers on what streaming services they should pay for next month. With today’s high volume of streaming content, a reduction strategy – adding and discontinuing certain services from one month to the next – can save you money and keep you ahead of the pop culture curve.
Surveys have shown that most consumers do not want to pay more than 40 to 50 USD per month for streaming and there are a lot of creative ways to follow everything you want, while still maintaining this type of budget. Do you like “Mandalorian”, but are you bored of anything else on Disney +? Then there is no reason to subscribe for more than a month or two. Do you have an Amazon Prime Video subscription, but go on Monday without watching it? That just means money on the drain.
Get the most out of streaming while paying the least comes down to three general rules:
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If you don’t get enough of a service, give it up.
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If you want to add a new service to watch a particular show that gives up new episodes every week, wait until it ends (or it will last until the last few episodes) so you can skip the whole season while you just pay one month. And don’t forget to cancel after 30 days.
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Don’t be afraid to enter into a long-term transaction with services that you know you will follow closely.
I went back to see how the monthly elections of 2020 kept me with the advantage of the retrospective, and I also compared my choices with other critics to see what I would have missed. In short, I found that consumers would have been the best in the last year with a Netflix NFLX subscription,
and the Disney + and Hulu packages (ESPN + comes with that as well), for a combined total of about $ 27 a month, with a potential spurge for HBO Max (which would total $ 42 a month) or Amazon Prime Video ($ 40 per month in total). Quality? Check it out. Amount? Check it out. Accessible? Check it out.
But everything is flexible, and the new year is a good time to consider a different approach, as an annual subscription to your support service could also be a cost-effective way to go.
An annual Disney + subscription, for example, currently stands at $ 69.99, a savings of about $ 16 from a monthly subscription, and is a double deal right now because Disney DIS,
increases prices at the end of March to $ 7.99 per month and $ 79.99 annually. If you know that you will watch every upcoming Marvel and “Star Wars” series in 2021, then it is absolutely worth clicking on an annual subscription now, before prices rise.
HBO Max will have a blockbuster year, thanks to streaming Warner Bros. movies. on the same day it debuts in theaters and offers a 20% discount for six months ($ 69.99 in total) for new subscribers – expensive, but still a good deal, because HBO rarely low prices.
The beginning of the year is also a good time to check what other offers you might be eligible for. Not everyone makes Amazon.com AMZN,
The Prime subscription for deliveries automatically comes with a subscription to Prime Video. Apple AAPL,
still offers a 12-month free trial of Apple TV + if you purchase a new device. And consult your mobile and cable / internet providers – Comcast CMCSA,
Cox, AT&T T,
and Verizon VZ,
among other things, it offers customers free offers for various streaming services. You can’t beat freely, you just need a little digging to find the right deals.
To get an idea of what services you’ll want in 2021, look back at what you liked in 2020. I compared my monthly picks to critics’ year-end lists and my list of favorite series this year.
Each month, we gave the major streaming services a rating: “Play”, “Pause” or “Stop”, similar to the ratings of investment analysts buying, holding and selling, in an effort to guide viewers to the best money services. In 2020, Netflix was my clear winner, with a perfect record of 12 “tracks”. Here’s how they scored the rest:
| Service | Play | Pause | Stop |
|
Netflix |
12 |
||
|
Hulu |
5 |
7 |
|
|
Disney + |
5 |
7 |
|
|
Video Amazon Prime |
4 |
4 |
4 |
|
HBO Max |
2 |
1 |
5 |
|
Apple TV + |
1 |
11 |
|
|
CBS All Access |
1 |
11 |
|
|
Peacock |
6 |
But a look back at the top of the show tilted a little differently.
The best of 2020
Here are my favorite streaming series from 2020:
- “I Can Destroy You” (HBO Max)
- “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV +)
- The Mandalorian (Disney +)
- “What we do in the shadows” (FX / Hulu)
- “Betty” (HBO Max)
- Harley Quinn (HBO Max)
- “ZeroZeroZero” (Amazon Prime Video)
- “Bojack Horseman” (Netflix)
- “Ramy” (Hulu)
- “Dark” (Netflix)
- Honorable Mention: “High Fidelity” (Hulu), “The Queen’s Gambit” (Netflix), “How to With John Wilson” (HBO Max), “Lovecraft Country” (HBO Max), “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet” ( Apple TV +), “The Expanse” (Amazon Prime Video), “The Flight Attendant” (HBO Max), “Devs” (Hulu)
That is, six from HBO Max, four from Hulu, three from Netflix, two from Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV + and one from Disney +.
And, apparently, I had too much time on my hands, I compiled more than a dozen TV critics’ “best” year-end lists * to find out the most popular shows of 2020, and so on. , to find out which streaming services had the best shows.
Based on my calculations, HBO Max was by far the top service, with 75 general mentions of the show, followed by Hulu (62), Netflix (52) and then a huge gap to Apple TV + (10), Peacock and Disney + (5 each), Amazon Prime Video (4) and CBS All Access (3). This suggests that I ranked Amazon Prime too high and HBO Max too low in my monthly choices.
(Disclaimer: I rated HBO Max as a “stop” so often because, for much of its short history, the service has not been accessible to about half of streaming viewers – those using Roku and Amazon Fire streaming devices TV as well as Comcast’s Xfinity X1 Don’t use to pay for the most expensive service if you can’t watch it on TV In the last month, AT&T’s WarnerMedia has reached HBO Max licensing agreements with Amazon, Roku ROKU,
Sony SNE,
Playstation 5 and Comcast, greatly expanding its audience. Now that almost everyone can get it, consider HBO Max back in my good graces. Meanwhile, Disney + has been so often recommended because it has become quite a must-have for families with younger children.)
So, considering all of the above, here’s the bottom line:
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Netflix may have been the most popular service, but it wasn’t the best.
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HBO Max was the highest quality service, but less consumer friendly (while the Roku / Amazon Fire TV issue has been fixed now, it is still the most expensive).
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Hulu was the best value for your dollar.
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Apple TV + had some gems, but was hurt by its superficial library.
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Disney + had a few hits, but spent too many months without major additions (that will change in 2021 with the Marvel attack).
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Amazon Prime Video was hit and missed.
-
Peacock and CBS All Access generally lagged behind.
But the changes are in full swing, and those dynamics are set to change in 2021 as Disney +, Apple TV + and Peacock dramatically develop their originals, and HBO Max has a number of new shows that can be even more impressive than its line of attractive movies. Much more about this tomorrow, in my 2021 preview.
(For what it’s worth, here are the end-of-year lists I’ve compiled from: Vulture, The Ringer, The AV Club, NPR, New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Paste Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter , Variety and Weekly Entertainment.)