The streaming industry is undergoing a significant transformation, characterized by stable growth and evolving consumer behaviors. Recent data reveals promising trends in subscription growth and churn rates, indicating a more favorable landscape for streaming services.
Streaming Industry Experiences Stable Growth
The ever-evolving streaming landscape has entered a new phase marked by more stable growth after years of battling volatility and churn, according to a new report from the data firm Antenna.
SVOD Subscription Growth
SVOD subscriptions in the U.S. grew by 11% from March 2024 to March 2025, according to Antenna’s research. This growth occurred evenly across premium SVOD offerings like Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, Apple TV+, and HBO Max, as well as more specialty services.
Churn Rates Decline
Antenna expects SVOD subscriptions in the U.S. to keep growing, too. From Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, U.S. SVOD added 5M net subscribers, per the company’s research.
How many of these subscribers will stick around? According to Antenna, churn rates are actually slowing down considerably, as more than one in three people who cancel an SVOD service will resubscribe within the year.
Market Dynamics
Streaming has been quite a volatile marketplace, especially over the past several years as major players tried to find their footing. Acquisition numbers kept going up, but cancellations were increasing at an even more rapid pace as subscribers cycled through different streamers, rarely sticking with one for a significant period of time.
Antenna CEO Jonathan Carson says he suspects the industry is “getting right side up again” over the last several quarters as acquisition has begun to outpace the losses. Q4 2024 provided an impressive 16M net adds, indicating that customers are settling into the streaming landscape.
“That is a very different narrative from what we’ve maybe heard out in the industry over the past couple of years,” Carson stated at a Prime Engage event with Amazon. “There was a lot of concern that maybe we weren’t finding our way to the profitable growth model in the industry. Going forward in streaming, we see something much more positive, better than expected.”
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Churn Rates by Service
The average churn rate for premium SVOD services has hovered around 5% since January 2023, per Antenna. Unsurprisingly, services with greater churn tend to be specialty platforms like Starz, whereas Netflix has consistently had the lowest churn rate, generally under 2%.
Ad-Supported Tiers Drive Growth
It appears that free and ad-supported tiers are driving streaming growth. In Q1, ad-supported tiers accounted for 57% of gross adds on premium SVOD services, up nearly 15% from 2023.
Another area where many premium SVOD services are finding success is with third-party distributors. For example, Prime Video alone was responsible for about 24% of gross adds across all premium streaming services in Q1 2025.
The report found that among some recently launched services, nine out of ten sign-ups for other services within Prime Video would not have happened if the service wasn’t offered by Amazon.
“Third-party distribution is now a very, very meaningful part of that more stable growth model,” Carson said.
Future of Streaming
Antenna’s reporting aligns with insights from Nielsen, which revealed that streaming usage surpassed the combined total of broadcast and cable TV viewing for the first time in May. Nielsen expects this to be a temporary change, but streaming will continue to gain larger shares of the television landscape as audiences and brands acclimate to this new environment.
