Aussies jump to streaming services with lockdowns: Video, music and game subscriptions all rise

New Research shows that internet usage has increased in areas of Australia with COVID-19 restrictions in place, and streaming services have been a big part of this.

A new report from technology insights company Telsyte shows that entertainment subscriptions have grown by five million between June 2020 and June 2021. 

Video streaming services saw the greatest growth at 16%, but music and gaming both followed closely behind, increasing 13% over the same period. 78% of households have at least one entertainment subscription, up from 65% three years ago, with subscribing households averaging 4.3 services up from 2.7 in 2018. 

The 42.1 million entertainment subscriptions owned by Aussies was led by video streaming services, which made up 19.1 million. Music followed at 13.5 million, with gaming at 7 million and Pay TV the only category seeing a decrease year-on-year to fall to 2.5 million. 

Interestingly, Telsyte found that individuals listed a drop in the average monthly budget spent on streaming services, which came in at just under $30. More than half of those with a video streaming service were likely to share their subscription in order to reduce costs, however, which can explain the drop in average budget despite the uptake in subscriptions.

Faster internet may have contributed to greater uptake in streaming

With the ACCC finding that Australian homes are seeing faster broadband, there’s no surprise we’re relying on it more heavily. The higher nbn speed tiers have also become more popular with consumers, allowing more homes to stream video in higher definition formats and play video games online.

With more than 400,000 residential customers jumping to faster nbn plans over the June 2021, the capacity for households to handle multiple simultaneous streams of large data files has increased, meaning multiple users in the one home can make use of different streaming services at the same time without seeing a large impact on their bandwidth. 

Lastly, video streaming services are expected to hit 26 million active subscriptions in Australia by 2025, and so with ongoing growth in music and game services, we’ll likely see these numbers rise further.

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