Streaming TV, music and concert prices from 2020 to 2026: the official U.S. price record, year by year

Between 2020 and 2025, the price index for cable, satellite and live streaming television service in the United States rose 19.3%, measured by the annual averages that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes for its Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, while prices for all items rose 24.4%, by our calculation. Over the same five years, the index for recorded music and music subscriptions increased 10.9%, purchase, subscription and rental of video 14.4%, and admission to movies, theaters and concerts 24.0%. This page sets out that record year by year from BLS's own data files, which added the October 2026 index on November 10, 2026. October 2026 is the last month it covers.

The four indexes

All four are U.S. city average series for all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted. The cable, satellite and live streaming index is set to December 1983=100 and the other three to December 1997=100, while the all-items index uses 1982-84=100, so their levels cannot be compared with one another; only their changes can. BLS marks the admissions index as a special index that rests on a much smaller sample, and its October 2026 table flags three of the four, all but the cable index, as not seasonally adjusted.

All four are small parts of the overall index. BLS's table gives their relative importance in September 2026, out of 100 for all items: 0.593 for the cable, satellite and live streaming index, 0.180 for the video index and 0.084 for the music index. It shows no such figure for admissions.

What the record shows

By our calculations, the cable, satellite and live streaming TV index went up in each of the five years: by 4.0% to 5.2% a year from 2021 to 2023, then by 2.4% in 2024 and 2.3% in 2025. In four of those years it trailed the all-items index, so over the period it fell about five percentage points behind; it ran ahead only in 2023, at 5.2% against 4.1%. In 2022, the year of the fastest overall inflation in this record, it rose 4.0% while all items rose 8.0%.

Purchase, subscription and rental of video fell 4.0% in 2021, then rose four years running, by as much as 5.8% in 2024, faster than all items in each of the last three years. From December 2025 to October 2026 the index slipped 0.5%.

Recorded music and music subscriptions barely moved in 2021 and 2022, with changes of -0.5% and +0.1%, while prices overall climbed. It then rose by 3.3% to 3.9% a year from 2023 to 2025, faster than all items in 2024 and 2025. Its 6.7% rise from December 2025 to October 2026 is the largest of the four indexes so far this year, though over the full five years to 2025 it remains the slowest riser.

Admission to movies, theaters and concerts rose most in 2022 and 2023, by 6.0% and 5.7%, and over five years its 24.0% gain was close to the 24.4% rise in all items. From December 2025 to October 2026 it fell 1.5%. It is also the special index of the four, built on a much smaller sample, and BLS's table marks it, like the music and video indexes, as not seasonally adjusted.

The gap in October 2025

BLS's data files mark October 2025 for each of these series as “Data unavailable due to the 2025 lapse in appropriations.” The October 2026 release explains the gap: no CPI survey data were gathered that month, most series have no October 2025 index, and wherever that index is missing, BLS publishes no 12-month change for October 2026. A BLS fact sheet says that, if all parties to a contract agree, a missing month can be approximated by the geometric mean of the months on either side, but that such figures “cannot be interpreted as official CPI series.”

This page uses no approximation. The yearly changes above come from the 2025 annual averages that BLS publishes in the same files, and the 2026 change is measured from December 2025, a month BLS did publish.

Where the figures stand

October 2026 is the latest month in this record, and no figure here is current beyond it. BLS has scheduled its news release for November 2026 for Thursday, December 10, 2026. For October's monthly moves and longer comparisons of the same indexes, see our report on the October figures.