Increased costs heap pressure on “free” platforms

I have recently received the latest in the rounds of price increases for several services I offer people. In general there has been a big rise in costs of around 20% but more significantly I am seeing a big reduction with the amount of free or low costs services either being crippled or significantly reduced. I have posted about this before, but more than ever before I can see 2025 being the last year of the so called free internet services and accounts. As an example Facebook has recently made some big changes to livestream storage echoing what has happened at Twitch, and I am hearing that unless ad revenue increases then Youtube will be forced to implement something similar where livestreams and/or videos will be deleted or their will be costs paid for storing info. Costs are up around 20-25% as far as I can see for the forthcoming year and those simply cannot be covered with ad revenue as that is currently falling quite considerably. I can see soon that at least content creators will have to be premium members on youtube or the videos will be removed after say 30 days. The livestreams surely have to go that way unless people pay for them to be stored as all the major platforms are doing it now. As livestreams continue to tank viewer numbers wise I can honestly say that free livestreams will soon be gone – the figures just aren’t adding up and are getting worse weekly! I mean viewing figures for livestreams that used to be in the thousands are now down to double figures. Most people have simply moved to straight videos that can be monetised easier! I have said this before – the budgets are just not around for free platforms unless they are huge, and even then they are seeing revenue pressure as costs soar.

I am also seeing in several other ways that money is tight. Software updates and new releases in many entertainment sectors like livestream and music software have really slowed down in 2025. Hardware is similarly under pressure. Here in the UK they have announced that billions will be cut from services as there is a distinct lack of cash even though the current government roundly criticised the previous governments policies that were pretty much the same…