In recent weeks, we’ve seen the impact COVID-19 has had on streaming – and it’s been a big one. After estimating that Americans could stream up to 60% more during the outbreak, Nielsen reported that streaming actually nearly doubled with an 85% increase.
And as a majority of people are working from home, not only is streaming usage on the rise, there’s also been a marked increase in “business hours” streaming.
Reelgood, an app that combines your streaming services (both free and paid) into one space, released some data about the streaming habits of their users over the past few months.
Month by Month
For the month of January, midnight to 8 a.m. accounted for 21% of total streaming, with 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. making up 43%. Despite being just a window of 5 hours, 7 p.m. to midnight accounted for more than a third – 36% of all streaming.
February saw pretty similar numbers, with midnight to 8 a.m. at 19%, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 44%, and 7 p.m. to midnight at 37%.
In March, there’s a noticeable shift though as quarantines went into effect across the nation. For March, the morning window only accounted for 15% while the evening held steady at 37%. The business hours window though increased from 44% to 48%.
For April, as the majority of the nation sat under stay-at-home orders, the morning window another percentage point to 14% and the evening dropped to 36% while business hours accounted for 51% of streaming.
Coronavirus Impact
And true to virtually all other reports we’ve seen, overall streaming skyrocketed towards the end of the month. The weeks of March 23 and March 30 accounted for 50% of streaming for the month with the other three weeks making up the other half. In fact, streaming increased so much towards the end of the month that the final week of March saw a full 101% more streams on Reelgood than the first week of the month.
So what’s the takeaway? The numbers here aren’t surprising since we know that streaming is up across the board and it makes sense this is happening during business hours while people are at home. But nonetheless, it’s interesting to see the numbers reflect the real effect COVID-19 is having.
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