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Netflix To Raise Prices By 13% To 18% (cnbc.com)
Netflix is raising its U.S. prices by 13 percent to 18 percent, its biggest increase since the company launched its streaming service 12 years ago. From a report: Its most popular plan will see the largest hike, to $13 per month from $11. That option offers high-definition streaming on up to two different internet-connected devices simultaneously. Even at the higher price, that plan is still a few dollars cheaper than HBO, whose streaming service charges $15 per month. The extra cash will help to pay for Netflix's huge investment in original shows and films and finance the heavy debt it has assumed to ward off rivals such as Amazon, Disney and AT&T. This marks the fourth time that Netflix has raised its U.S. prices; the last hike came in late 2017. But this is the first time that higher prices will hit all 58 million U.S. subscribers, the number Netflix reported at the end of September.
If only there were a way to pay for original programming by using advertising or something. That way, everybody could have all of these TV "networks" piped into their homes for a low cost fee and maybe even pick and choose "plans" that suite them as a mix and match of the "channels" with shows they like to watch. It should really keep the cost down vs having to pay $15 to all these separate streaming services ... oh wait
This summary does a very good job at making a $2 per month price increase appear very dramatic.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Your thinking is why the U.S. Government has 20 trillion dollars in recognized debt, and 200 trillion dollars in debt that it just pretends isn't there.
You know what? Money matters.
I joined Netlix because the price was more reasonable than cable.
That price point seems to work for them because they are not only overtaking cable but they have money to create original content too.
How long before Netflix becomes just as bad as cable?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
HBO is $9.99 a month for students. I pay $0.99 a month for Hulu, and have directv deal to pay $30 a month for 60+ channels which includes HBO for $5 a month. I think directv is now $35 or $40 plus $5 for HBO. The only company that doesnâ(TM)t offer promos or deals is Netflix.
Well, cable ain't on-demand, and cable also controls the rate at which you can watch a show.
So, I'm guessing Netflix could be 2x the price, and people would still find it more valuable than cable.
Many people are sure.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Start with low prices, kill the competition, and then raise prices higher than the cable/satellite providers once they succeed. Typical drug dealer behavior.
The only thing that amazes me is how many people didn't see this coming.
Two things I actually liked enough to watch, and stay awake for: Black Mirror and the Lost in Space reboot.
Beyond that I can't get excited about any of their new content. Not sure it's worth $11/month. Definitely not worth $15/month.
No mention of this is international, or just US. Prices listed are in USD, it seems.
Any idea if this will affect Netflix in Europe? Well, not if, but when?
Who ever said competition was a good thing?
Greedy fucks.
I tend to rant.
I cancelled my Netflix subscription several months ago. I'd had Netflix streaming since about early 2010.
At first, it was GREAT. Lots of high quality content, and stuff I'd never see anywhere else. Very cool, high quality documentaries. The rating system actually seemed to work. Then, over the next few years it slowly but surely got worse. In late 2018 I feel myself wading through more and more and more garbage, and barely ever watching Netflix. I watched more from my DVR than Netflix! The S/N had ratio went down considerably since I first started. Netflix now reminds me of the dreck I was trying to get away from when I cancelled cable! So I dropped it. I don't miss it.
So I (eventually) switched to Prime. So far so good. Prime seems to go after the more premium experience and curates it's content more. Netflix seems to just want to dump massive quantities of crap on the service, and make you figure out what you want.
I don't recall the last time a summary on slashdot provided such generous spin to a company (happens all the time for politicians, of course). I'd ask how much Netflix paid for this but they're smart enough to realize that the dwindling audience on this failing website isn't worth investing in anyways.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Slippery slopes do exist; don't make the mistake of thinking that such an argument constitutes some kind of fallacy.
If your other goods or services (e.g. broadband) went up by 13-18%, I'm sure you'd complain too.
Happens all the time and about things I care about a LOT more than TV. Health insurance routinely increases by similar percentage amounts and the actual dollar amounts are FAR higher.
"It's only $2" is the refuge of a person with $2 to spare and expecting everyone else to ALWAYS have $2 to spare, on top of whatever they are paying for everything else. That's $2 a month, which is worse. You're now inching towards cable/satellite bills.
This is the US, i.e. the richest country in the world. Most of us really do have $2 to spare, even most of the less fortunate among us. If the $2 is a problem then perhaps you should reconsider paying $11 (or $13) a month to an objectively frivolous TV streaming service.
Seriously, if it's a problem for a lot of their customers Netflix will have to deal with the loss. If their customers mostly don't care (as I suspect most won't) then it isn't really a problem. Expecting Netflix to just keep their prices static and let inflation eat away their profits endlessly is naive.
I refuse to pay more than a token, throwaway payment for something that is just visual entertainment.
That's reasonable. Many others are willing to pay more. Neither of you is wrong for doing so.
The solution is simple:
Advertising.
Simple interrupt the program, for a few minutes, to show valuable informational content.
Also, this whole "streaming" thing has to go. Simply broadcast on a set time, on a set day, to a set device, and people can watch it ot not.
None of this "timeshifting" or "streaming stuff". TV does not revolve around you and accomodate you, you must accomodate tv.
Netflix is still better in every conceivable way than cable, including price point.
In Canada the increase this year for the standard plan (ie the bare minimum needed to get high definition content) jumped 27%. True, our dollar is at a deep discount but so is the content Netflix makes available up here. Good luck finding an episode of (the original) Magnum PI or a reasonably new movie release. By my math a Canadian subscription is worth about $5. In Canadian currency. That might sound harsh considering governments put regional restrictions and licensing on some content, but Netflix also deliberately hampers the efforts of people using VPN services and DNS-based redirects. Years ago the Rhinoceros party had a campaign promise of simply selling Canada to the US and giving every Canadian a million dollars. If it meant we got American content for music and streaming services I'd say go for it.
Who the fuck started this madness? You don't go "to B from A", you go "from A to B".
#DeleteFacebook
As channels and movies studios try to start their own streaming services netflix will have even less options and yet is going to charge more. After the movie industry divides up the market into different subscription services all wanting money I will boycott all streaming services.
Your currency is backed by maple syrup and beaver pelt reserves - what were you expecting?
Too bad that Netflix doesn't offer a streaming service that offers only non-original content, avoiding the cost of the "huge investment in original shows and films."
Nothing. I wrap myself in beaver. pelts. Too bad. You can wrap yourself in whatever you think will keep you warm and watch your own TV, eh?
True, true. If I could pay for the service in maple syrup or surplus firewood I would not be so outraged. Maybe Netflix could extend an olive branch and film some originals up here. A 4K reboot of the Beachcombers? Or Justin Bieber as the King of Kensington? After all, the higher fees are supposed to support new programming...
I live in sweden and have the full HD package, but the past few month the quality have degraded ALOT, I recall when I started to use netflix and the image was so crisp it felt unnatural on the massive 46 inch tv. Now I mostly look on a 24inch monitor and it's basically the quality of a halfdecent divX movie around 2000 not to mention how bad it looks on my 65inch tv.
After being a loyal customer for over 6years I now start to think about cancel the service due to imagequality.
I even started to subscribe to a local alternative a few days back and while it didn't have as much content but the imagequality, my god what a difference
This one simple trick will stop headline writers in their tracks!
#DeleteFacebook
Stil havenâ(TM)t figured out how to return the streaming movies. The costs of 4 dvd per month isnâ(TM)t comparable with unlimited high definition streaming, yet the cost was higher almost fifteen years ago.
By canceling your Netflix membership for 3 months a year.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It'll cause a lot of folks to re-evaluate their subscriptions at a time when competition in streaming is heating up. I'm probably going to cut back or cancel the DVD plan I have as I just don't use it. This reminded me I need to do that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My media player with a 2 TB drive hookup along with the collection of DVD's I've ordered over the years remains at nearly a fixed one time cost over my life. Best of all if the Internet goes down it's still showing movies and TV shows with no commercials.
It's never going to be a good value. 80% of their content offering is totally useless to me - wrong language, etc.
I've never used it, but, unless you are into original content, a lot of people I know that use/have used it dropped it because after a year, there wasn't anything worth watching they hadn't already seen.
Don't worry, soon we'll have a new internet tax, I mean levy, to make up for the fact that Netflix doesn't pay its artists enough. Use over 15GBs a month, well you must be streaming and those artists need their paycheck increased.
Don't like it, well here https://act.openmedia.org/noin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I tried to cut the cord and didn't like it. For one, I wasn't saving much once the Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, HBO, and ESPN subscriptions were priced in. For two between the previous services and an OTA it became a damn scavenger hunt to find which services had the stuff we wanted to watch.......just to then find out "Sorry, that's on Youtube" etc.
After a couple months we tried a compromise by getting Directtv Now. The service its self isn't ready for prime time. The interface is buggy and on an Apple TV navigating the guide was an exercise in infinite scrolling. And in our market they didn't have local channels available so we still had to use an antenna.
In the end we went back to a low tier cable subscription with a few streaming services to supplement. I paid up front for a Tivo with a lifetime subscription, rent a cable card for $5 a month, and have two tivo minis for other rooms in the house.
At the end of the day cable "just works". I don't want to come home after a long day and putz around hopping from one service to another looking for something to watch. Yes, it's somewhat brainless.
The thing about streaming services is that they are going to fracture more and more as time goes on. Various content holders are figuring out that they might as well set up their own distribution channels and pay themselves to show their IP. They tried this vertical integration back in the early 20th century by trying to run theaters too. Those efforts were slapped down as anti-trust violations. Today though, it would seem anything goes.
We are in the process of trading all you can eat cable service for a series of smaller walled gardens.
Because they suck ass and deserve it.
Not according to any relevant metric.
You mean except for GDP and total wealth? Yes the US has more money as of 2019 than any other single country and has for quite some time. China will probably overtake the US in a few years but that is then and this is now.
In other news: American Football is not the most watched sport in the world and the US did not single-handedly beat the Nazi's in WWII.
Got any other fake and irrelevant strawmen you'd like to eviscerate?
This is the beginning of the slow death spiral that leads to it's eventual irrelevancy. Then again maybe I am missing the point of Netflix. It was once a gateway into the cable-less world, wire-cutting if you will. It now seems it is just another media company, albeit with an early tech advantage.
So here is my theory...
In an attempt to get more subscribers the executives have allowed the management team to convince them that more original content is where they need to head.
Unfortunately it costs a ton of money to be the original product slinger, especially in the video space.
While the original content started out as cool with some good success it will very quickly consume more time, money and resources than they bargained for and instead of focusing on staying relevant with new licensing contracts and making use of other tech innovations they will pour their money down the drain attempting to regain that initial high of original content success.
I guess Netflix will find out how much value customers see in original content. I personally think the original content should have a additional charge for anyone wanting to watch that content. I know myself I watch less and less Netflix these days, and don't find a lot of their original content that good.
We watch about as much on DVD as on streaming. Much wider variety of material too.
Its kind of fucked up that i in this backwater country get perhaps 1/6th of the selection ppl in US get. and i still have to pay the same..
The last few months there have been absolutley nothing of interest on netflix.
So bye bye to netflix and spotify goes on the same time. can pay 5bucks on a decent vpn instead...
I think they have a lot more selection through dvd/bluray. I could probably setup a bluray ripper and watch them at my convenience and have better selection available.
is the cable company price hikes. Everything old is new again. How do you spell cable? N-E-T-F-L-I-X
The industry is starting to catch up.... before it was just Cable video that was expensive,
now streaming video is starting to get expensive.
This is exactly how it happens.... small accretive price increases to suit the greedy publishers.
I remember.... it doesn't seem too long ago when Cable TV was $15 a month for 50 channels Basic + Expanded.
Boil the frog alive.... "Boil the frog alive".
When someone increase something by certain percent, then it should say up to a certain number, not to another percent. What does increasing 13% to 18% mean? 18% of what?
I just cancelled my subscription. that price hike was nothing but greed. they just stopped in-app purchases that saved them around 250 million dollars a year, they are losing disney shows, and too many show I am interested in is in another language. Just not worth it anymore. Fortunately some shows are on amazon prime and other streaming services.
I decided to cancel now instead of waiting the three months current subscribers are getting at the old rate because I would either forget or decide to keep it - which is what netflix wants.
Out of the entire "500-channel-universe" that people pay for on cable, most people only watch 4 or 5 channels heavily, the rest rarely. It's a different 4-or-5-channels for different people. Nobody denies that duplicating the entire "500-channel-universe" via streaming is very expensive. But getting your 2 or 3 or 4 favourite streaming services is usually a lot less expensive.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I just canceled my account. The price increase is what triggered the thought to take the action. But price wasn't my major motivation. Rather, Netflix keeps dumping good content. The last several times I went to search for a specific movie or show, it wasn't there. Law and Order, NCIS LA, Murdoch Mysteries, Downton Abbey, to name a few.
As for Netflix Originals, the only one that really got our attention was The Crown, but do we want to keep paying all year just for that March release? We've been watching Netflix less and less. Finally, we couldn't justify the cost and said good-bye.