Americans spending over $500 yearly on streaming: Survey

Once upon a time, people were cutting the cord, dropping cable, and switching to streaming services to save money.

But now, with classic comfort TV shows dominating ratings, paying to watch them is getting a little more uncomfortable for customers who, instead of channel surfing are doing more subscription surfing.

Forbes Home and OnePoll surveyed 2,000 Americans who stream at least an hour daily and found:

• 33 percent had to create their own streaming subscription account due to stricter service rules
• People on average spend more than $550 on streaming a year
• 44 percent reported increased subscription costs from the year before

Navigating streaming services in surplus is not just hard on consumers but producers, and advertisers as well. 

"If you’re an artist, you want to have your shows on the platform that going to get the most views," Michael Smith an IT and Public Policy Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

"We’re wondering in the industry at what point do they all raise pricing too much where enough consumers say okay I’ve had it," added Dan Rayburn, a streaming media analyst.

Customers are cutting costs wherever they can, as according to the survey, more than half of respondents said they still use streaming services that someone else pays for.