After years of inflation, Americans are used to sticker shock. But nothing compares to the surging price of streaming video.
Last week, Apple TV+ became the latest streaming service to raise its price—up from $6.99 to $9.99 per month—following the example of Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Netflix, which all hiked their prices in October.
Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that’s double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven’t even been around for 10 years.
Some of us suddenly stopped paying anything for streaming this year.
Yarr.
batten down the hatches
Hoist the mainsail
Consumers are paying
That. That’s the reason they’re not stopping.
Yup, no reason at all to stop raising prices. Not a one.
🏴☠️
My household has drastically cut back on what we subscribe to. It’s honestly overwhelming figuring out where to go to watch something, much less justifying paying for multiple services.
There is a one-stop shop where you can watch anything, matey!
Just sail the high seas
You can stream pretty much anything for free here: https://fmoviesz.to/
Just make sure you have uBlock Origin installed.
If you ever get lost, just search ‘free streaming sites reddit’ and go from there.
What the hell. Can people please cancel en masse already? Why are consumers putting up with this? The price increases stop once it’s not profitable anymore.
The price increases stop once it’s not profitable anymore.
When has this ever happened?
Just to be clear, are you questioning whether there’s ever been a case where prices have been stable because a company is worried about losing customers? I mean, there are tons. We’re coming out of a 20 year period of historically low inflation. High inflation is recent, not inevitable.
Consumer electronics are an obvious example. Smart phone prices actually dropped this year on soft demand.
I guess the complexity to pirate things. Or people forgot how to.
I’ve been sailing the high seas for almost 20 years now. It’s never been easier to pirate things. Stremio and a well known service honestly beats all steaming services both in quantity and quality of the “catalogue”. At least for English language content.
I never stopped as well, but I hear young people saying stuff like “what do we do”…
In France, there was also Hadopi at some point, so people were afraid to pirate stuff, that’s how they won.
This generation of consumers is even dumber than the last one.
They pride themselves on getting taken for a ride because it gives them a sense of belonging.
Pushing ads pushes profits
Some observers see another reason for the frequent price hikes: to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said as much during an August earnings call: “We’re obviously trying, with our pricing strategy, to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier.”
Why? Unlike a paid subscription, which brings in a fixed amount of revenue each month, there is no ceiling to advertising revenue. The number of ads displayed and the rates a streaming platform can charge marketers for the ads are constantly fluctuating, offering unlimited revenue upside.
Son of a bitch
Yo ho ho.
Why is the VPN singing sea shanties?
We stopped subscribing to anything. I get some stuff as part of my phone plan but once thats over I am not paying to have these services. I pretty much fell behind on torrent, so there will be a learning curve.
We stopped all the subscriptions in the spring. I pay for Usenet access, but it’s less than Netflix alone used to be. It’s automated and I don’t have to worry if my services have what I want to watch.
It’s easier now. It’s automated.
But how will the CEOs be able to buy their fourth super yacht if they don’t raise prices more? Won’t someone please think of the CEOs stuck with only three super yachts?
Disney is for those have kids, they will pay a lot to have sure they have a free time. Apple tv can rise whatever they want, apple clients already prove they pay any questionable thing for whatever price they offer.
For other parents: PBS Kids Video It has a bunch of stuff, can be cast to a TV for toddlers; or put on a tablet for older toddlers.
For paid streaming services, we have decided to limit ourselves to two at a time. Once we’re bored with one, we cancel it and do another for a while.
I would literally never pay money for my kid to be able to watch Disney or probably any TV. The only thing I ever pay money for is a few educational apps and they are cheap. You can’t rent kid’s movies at the library if you don’t pirate things.
and analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices
Well, my VPN is cheaper and won’t restrict me via fragmented exclusive content.
Not only using the VPN for that, but also, to take advantage of regional pricing for subscriptions in other countries. After the price hike, I’m paying $5 for Netflix in another country instead of the US price. Still get the same shows as a US subscription.
dvd and bluray are so goshdarn cheap that my wife and I thought to just buy everything we like watching physically. yeah we still have to rent new things every so often, but we generally just watch completed series or older movies.
we did an activity called ‘the vault’ where we identified ~800 movies/series that we could just live with forever. Now that the list was made its been the fun casual game of hunting for the best deal.
for instance, we like horror and we found all Blu-rays of the nightmare on elm street for like $15, all Halloween movies for ~$30, original star trek complete series $25.
I am predicting that our 800 works will cost somewhere around $2000? i winced at seeing that price, but spreading it over a few years of searching (we like trying to find our copies at local used stores) i think it isn’t too bad! plus its another activity for me and my wife to do.
Simply realizing that “wow we should just buy the stuff we watch on repeat” has been good for the monthly expenses. yeah we miss out on some exclusive stuff, but honestly there is just so much good shit out there from the past. i can certainly wait for that exclusive stuff to go on sale or finish up its finale so i can resub for a month to binge it.
certainly not laying out all the pros and cons of doing it, but i think the adventure of rediscovering physical media again has been showing is more pros than cons.
I’m all for owning media and having hard copies but not sure I am following on the financial side. $2000 for your “vault” is around 16 years worth of paying for streaming services. That’s not including your self reported extra renting. Do you think the 16 year ROI is worth it? Is the higher quality media a factor?
Just curious how it would be good for your “monthly expenses” given how much you are intending to spend.
16 years of a single ad-ridden service, maybe. Most people probably have more than just their lone Disney+ bundle or Netflix, so I’d say it’s probably closer to 5 years, also assuming they don’t continue to raise prices, which obviously won’t happen.
Watching through complete old series will save you from the disappointment of a show getting canned after one season which seems to be all the rage with streaming providers now.
Weird how you think you’re taking the intelligent play when you’re actually getting taken for a ride.
The smart thing to do would be to subscribe to a VPN for <$4/month then download everything you want.
Of the price increases, the Apple one is the only one that doesn’t really offend me. It was dirt cheap after it launched because it didn’t have a big library of original content. No one was going to pay more than $5 for that service.
Now they have somewhat of a modest library, and now it’s $7.
Edit: got my numbers wrong. Going from $7 to $10
This article says they’re raising it to $10, no? I think this is the article I read earlier. But Central Park is fantastic and the only thing I know about Apple TV.
Yeah, my bad. It’s going from $7 to $10. You’re right.
The good news is more and more pirate streaming sites are up like 123series.art and movie-web.app.
