One of the trends of 2024 was music rightsholders pointing to the video-streaming sector, where prominent premium subscription services also include ads. Why, wondered the rightsholders, couldn’t companies like Spotify start charging for their ad-supported services to match this? It spurred Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to tell analysts “why music is not analogous to video” as a pushback on that thinking.

But some new figures from research firm Antenna may light a new fire under the ‘should DSPs charge for free?’ debate in 2025. “As of Q3’24 ad-supported tiers represented 43% of all subscriptions among those services that offer ad plans”.

These are US figures, by the way. So, 43% of Americans who are paying for a video-streaming subscription are also seeing ads. Peacock, Hulu, Disney+, Discovery+, Paramount+ and Netflix are among the services riding this wave.