More and More New Streaming Services Being Announced, How Much is too Much?

How many streaming services do you currently use? Does that include mobile apps for video services that you pay for? How about all of the apps on your gaming console, Roku, Apple TV, or Chromecast that you use? This amount may increase before it decreases any time soon. Just this past week, six different companies have announced that they plan to unveil their own new online streaming services

AT&T is trying to compete with Netflix, Apple wants to incorporate more video to mobile devices, Walmart has acquired Vudu to compete with Amazon, Costco wants to provide video for high-end members, and startup company Quibi (previously known as NewTV) is trying to modify video consumption.

Plenty of online streaming services already exist, which include (but are not limited to) Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, etc. Many regional cable providers also have streaming apps for your phone, like Charter’s Spectrum TV and Comcast’s Xfinity TV. The prices for all of these options range widely, from about $10 to $60 per month.

We know Disney is planning on releasing something in late 2019. NBCUniversal and Discovery have been thinking about it. Sports leagues already have their own streaming apps, and the amount of subscribers for both sports and creative content streaming has been increasing steadily.  

Viewers now have a plethora of new content to watch. This is great news for content hungry audiences, but the amount of different platforms needed to access what you want can be overwhelming. Scrolling endlessly, paying for multiple services, and toggling between apps to watch anything--will the problem be big enough to push people back to traditional cable TV? What solutions will be presented for this new problem of too many streaming services?