2019 has been a coming year for cord cutting. Before this year the term “cord cutting” meant just having a pair of rabbit ears. Now it has a totally different meaning. This ‘new era’ of cord cutting is confusing a lot of people who are looking to just lower their monthly bill. And the biggest issue they are having is what service to choose. Many streaming services don’t offer enough content to replace your current cable provider. Example: Netflix has movies but they don’t have live TV or live sports. The new Disney + service is said to only have on-demand content, The upcoming NBCUniversal service is said to only host on-demand content as well. In most cases to fully replace what you have with your cable provider you’re gonna need at least 2 separate streaming services.
But, if you truly want to cut the cord do what most old timers do and get you an over-the-air antenna with a converter box for recording shows and call it a day.
Looking at the title you may be thinking “why would YouTube need a separate device when their app is available on every platform? Plus they wont have the extra overhead of having to deal with another physical device such as the Chromecast” Well to understand why, lets look at how cord cutting has affected YouTube this year. Then we’re gonna look at the other platforms that Google has.
Notice how many famous people have come to YouTube. December of 2017 the biggest one Will Smith joined the platform and took off right as cord cutting was in its infancy, and former Chicago Bears wide receiver Earl Bennett started a podcast along with many other athletes. Once cord cutting started gaining momentum toward the end of 2018, many already established celebs who were just posting videos periodically are now posting on a regular basis and creating podcasts. (Creating good ancillary income) YouTube gets over 30 million visitors per day. That’s more than Roku (27 milly) and close to Amazon Fire TV. (34 milly)
As of 2017 over 55 milion chromecast and chromecast devices have been sold.
- Lets first start with the list of google branded apps and products that use googles operating system. We’re all familiar with Android TV boxes, but Google themselves don’t make one. In most cases it’s hard to find a good reliable Android TV box that’s neither glitchy or too expensive. The first one I bought (Zeki) didn’t work at all and had no online support. Basically a paper weight. Most cord cutters want to listen to music, watch content and maybe play a few games.
- Google music has over 175 million paid and free users (free Trial)
- Iheart 120 million as of August 2018
- Spotify 217 million as of May 2019
- Let’s take a look at paid services that YouTube offer.
- YouTube TV ($49.99/mo)
- YouTube Music ($9.99/mo)