As more Australians stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic, home entertainment subscriptions have seen a mighty boost.
According to emerging technology analyst firm Telsyte, Australians took on 5.6 million new subscriptions to the end of June 2020, an increase of 18 per cent from 2019. The total number of streaming video on demand (SVOD), streaming music and games subscriptions reached almost 37 million at the end of the period and are forecast to jump to 58 million by 2024.
Streaming Video Considered "Essential"
SVOD was the largest category, with around 16.3 million subscriptions at the end of June, a year-on-year increase of 32 per cent from the 12.3 million in June last year. Netflix (5.4 million) and Stan (2.1 million) continued to hold the top rankings among SVOD service providers. The performance of Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ , both launched under a year ago, wasn't too shabby; with 1.7 and 1.1 million subscriptions respectively.
Telsyte notes 52% of SVOD users believe their services have become “essential” since the pandemic. No doubt this would be the case with many SVOD users in Melbourne at the moment given Stage 4 restrictions confining the city's millions of residents to home for the most part.
Telsyte's research also indicated 47% of households that subscribe to SVOD services have more than one service subscription, an increase from 41 per cent in June 2019. Some of this growth has been put down to a perception that not as much new content has been available from providers since the start of the pandemic.
On a related note, you can find out how fast your connection needs to be to use various video streaming services here and how fast your connection is using our speed test.
Streaming Music Maturing, Gaming Subscriptions Skyrocket
The total number of streaming music subscriptions only increased 2 per cent year on year to 12.2 million, but Teslyte notes over half are now paid subscriptions, compared to 42 per cent at the end of June 2019.
In relation to gaming, the greatest growth was in video game service subscriptions, more than doubling to 2 million at the end of June 2020 (up from 0.9 million in June 2019). Telsyte says the video game subscription service segment is "set to explode" as several companies are competing to be the ‘Netflix’ of games.
More from the Telsyte Australian Entertainment Subscriptions Study 2020 can be found here.
