In the latest in a series of recent price increases by America’s largest streaming platforms, Netflix plans to raise the price of its ad-free service a few months after the end of the Hollywood actors strike.
Netflix’s latest price increase came in January of 2022.
Jessica Toonkel and Sarah Krouse for The Wall Street Journal:
The streaming service is discussing raising prices in several markets globally, but will likely begin with the U.S. and Canada, according to people familiar with the matter. It couldn’t be learned how much Netflix will raise prices by or when exactly the new prices will take effect.
On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery said the monthly price of the ad-free version of its Discovery+ streaming service was rising to $8.99 from $6.99, while the cost of its ad-supported platform remains unchanged at $4.99 a month.
Next week, the prices of the ad-free versions of Disney’s streaming platforms—Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+—are officially going up, an increase the company announced during the summer. It marks the second time since last fall that Disney raised prices…
MacDailyNews Take: The more competitors raise prices, the better the price looks Apple’s high-quality, awards-magnet Apple TV+ at a low $6.99/month (and even lower as part of an Apple One plan).
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Imagine this…a nation wide boycott via subscription cancellation of streaming services for 1 month. I’m sure they’d get the message. I know, I know, it’s a big ask of yourself to drop the crack cocaine habit even if it’s just for awhile.
I have gone back to VPN and torrents, NZBS
Good timing on their part! They raise price now, but public will blame the actors new contract for that. Even though nothing is even in production, and lead times are like 6 months
No me.. Blaming Netflix. Netflix dealt with the actors not me.. Netflix can go to hell.
Raising prices now diverts blame to actors’ pay raises, even tho production lead times are at least 6 months
I believe I would tend to side with you If the actual pay raises will begin in 6 months or more. Most likely payrolls are still paid out during the 6+ months of production so the increase IS directly due to the increases in pay. No diversion of blame to make.
Netflix content in general is not great. It is time to cancel my subscription.
Why? All of their good content has been retrieved by the networks for their own streaming services. Their originals are not, and have seldom been, worth hanging in for – to be blunt – Netflix’s teams suck. If they were smart they’d be lowering prices and fighting for better content. it’s ironic, given they led the way years ago, but their service is not in any way essential. Very often their non-original content is time restricted, and the originals are nothing to brag about (coughHeartofStonecough). Equally sad that Hollywood keeps swallowing it up to remain ‘relavant’.
As a side note, other than the on-demand aspect, with every network flexing their exclusivity, I fail to see how we have ended up with anything other than much more expensive cable, and it’s all thank to greedy people in Silicon Valley, including Apple, not cable companies (net neutrality was the biggest shell game in modern tech history). Never thought I would miss those old days, but here we are. Everything legitimately useful that was innovated by the elder Silicon Valley has been regressed by literal decades by its younger counterparts, IMO. We are in a digital dark age with the advent of web 2.0 executives and their ‘vision’ (inspired by the likes of Balmer’s business model), web 3.0 is a millennial pipe-dream fueled by misunderstanding, and it sure looks like we are going to keep diving deeper into that hole. It will probably get to the point where if one is not incredibly tech savvy, you are pretty much using AOL again worse than it was in 1995 in the 2020s, at a much higher cost. That is sad, that is ridiculous, and it is the precise opposite of what all of this was supposed to be about. 😐