Nearly every streaming service on the market has raised the prices of its plans over the last two years, but only one has changed its whole name as well. Warner Bros. Discovery left many of us scratching our heads when it replaced HBO Max with Max, but that wasn’t enough to knock it off the top spot in Whip Media’s 2023 US Streaming Satisfaction report (via Variety).
For the third year running, Max has the highest overall satisfaction rating of any streamer. That’s the good news for WBD. The bad news is that Max suffered the most precipitous drop as well — from 94% in 2022 to 88% in 2023. It’s not hard to figure out why.
After running away with the top spot in 2022, Max’s customer satisfaction is now 1% higher than Hulu’s, which held steady at 87% for the second year in a row. Meanwhile, Disney+ dropped into third place from 88% in 2022 to 85% in 2023. Netflix continued its descent as well, tumbling from 90% in 2021 to 80% in 2022 to 77% in 2023. But I’m positive the upcoming Netflix price hike will help boost customer satisfaction in 2024.
While the biggest names in streaming struggle to satisfy subscribers, the mid-tier services are on the rise. After climbing from 75% to 79% in 2022, Paramount+ didn’t budge in 2023. Prime Video rose by 2%, Apple TV+ increased by 5%, and Peacock jumped by 6%.
The important takeaway from this survey of 2,011 U.S. adults is that the gap between streaming services is shrinking pretty rapidly. In 2021, HBO Max was 30 points higher than Peacock (92% to 62%). Two years later, Max is just 14 points higher than Peacock and Prime Video (88% to 74%). Netflix looks like an outlier now, but it might not in another year or two.
“Today’s SVOD competition is fierce!” Whip Media notes. “Subscriber churn and optionality are both increasing as millions of users are willing to substitute new streaming services — even if temporarily — to reach the most resonant mix of original and library content.”
