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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
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.
My lord that sounds complicated.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
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.
Yes and when there are on-demand shows on cable, the selection may be limited. For example only the current season of whatever show I'm watching. And the experience is less than ideal as there are embedded ads that can't be avoided. To ensure these ads are unavoidable, features like fast forwarding are disabled for the entire show and not just the ads. It makes the sure harder to watch and re-watch.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
Travelers and Salvation are also good, although they're not Netflix exclusives AFAIK.
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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."
This format was selected to move the worst news closest to the front of the article. Headline writers do far worse things.
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...
This one simple trick will stop headline writers in their tracks!
#DeleteFacebook
Agreed. Bullshit clickbait tactics like that just reinforce the meme that the editors are idiots.
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.
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While what you say is true, I know the cable box I got from my company is awful. I can't filter out channels in the guide that I don't get, the search is a terrible 'exact text on the title', it is slow as some pages take seconds to refresh. It hangs, sometimes ignoring the remote altogether until minutes later when it does all the buttons you pressed all at once. I have never looked at the on demand and I would never conceive the thought of doing so, since the portal I have to do it with is so inconceivably bad. Literally they could use a Kodi plugin and be miles ahead in technology.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
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?
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.
Hulu is $0.99 for you only because you got in on their "Limited Commercial Plan" promo for 12 months. When the 12 months ends the price goes to $7.99/month. And that includes commercials. Lots of commercials. I'd hate to see what the "Unlimited Commercial Plan" would look like.
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.
Well frankly, a service SHOULD have everything, and we have the choice about what we want to see. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and it won't ever be the case until there are enormous shifts in the marketplace .