Disney+ To Soon Allow Users To Pause Subscriptions
With the explosion of streaming services available and money tighter than ever, many households are looking at ways to keep their monthly subscriptions as low as possible.
We’ve seen Disney offer subscribers a variety of different options, including lower-priced ad-supported options, annual subscriptions with discounts, and bundles with other services, including internet providers, banks, cable companies, and other streaming services.
While Disney has been looking to increase the profit it makes from its streaming services, it’s been making changes, such as cracking down on account sharing between households, price rises, and a reduction in the amount of original programming it creates.
Any streaming service’s biggest problem is churn, aka people unsubscribing. However, according to new data from analytics provider Antenna, in the past year, there’s been an increase in the number of people unsubscribing to streaming services, only returning when there is enough content to watch for a month or two.
Instead of having multiple streaming services at once, more people are now rotating between the services, jumping in for a month or two, binging through all the original programming and then unsubscribing and then signing up for a different service.
Some streaming services are suffering from this more than others, as Netflix and Amazon are the platforms that most people keep on a continious subscription, but rotate out other platforms like Peacock, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Max, Hulu and Disney+.
The monthly median percentage of premium streaming video subscribers who rejoined the same service they had cancelled within the prior year was 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024, up from 29.8% in 2022.
This is why many streaming services are trying to make deals to bundle their platforms together to reduce churn. Bundled users are statistically less likely to unsubscribe.
Netflix and Hulu both currently offer the option to pause a subscription for three months, making it easier for people to rotate through their streaming services. According to the WSJ, Disney+ will soon also offer a similar pause option.
While the idea of making it easier for people to pause their subscriptions seems counterproduce, it means it much easier for these streaming services to bring that user back onto the platform a few months later.
In the coming years ahead, we’re going to see more consolation between the different streaming services, as there are simply too many on the market. Currently, streaming services are trying to work out ways to keep subscribers engaged, which is why Disney prefers to stretch out its new releases weekly rather than Netflix’s binge-drop method. It’s also why Disney has been advertising all of the major new originals coming to Disney+ and Hulu in the year ahead, as it tries to encourage people to keep their subscriptions rather than cancelling.
Ideally, they’d like to keep subscribers rolling over month to month on an ad-supported deal, which is certainly where they are pushing audiences to, but a paused subscription is still better for them than a cancelled subscription.
Roger’s Take: Since Hulu already offers a pause option, it makes sense for Disney+ to do the same, as the two platforms get closer ahead of a likely merger. While customers still have an option for a monthly subscription with no long-term contracts, rotating subscriptions are going to become more common as audiences get used to doing it. It’s something I’m planning on doing more of in 2025, as a couple of my annual subscriptions are coming up for renewal around Black Friday (unless I can get a good annual subscription deal).
Would you use a pause subscription option on Disney+? Let me know on social media!
Roger Palmer
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