You would think as streaming services go to war with each other, prices may in fact go down at some point as they compete for wallets and eyeballs. Instead, the opposite is happening, and price hikes are frequent and endless.
No one is pushing their luck more than Disney, however, who has just announced large hikes to the add-free tiers of Disney Plus and Hulu.
- Disney Plus is going from $10.99 a month to $13.99 a month.
- Hulu is going from $14.99 a month to $17.99 a month.
Quite literally a year ago to this day, Disney raised prices from $6.99 to $10.99, and now, the price for the service has doubled since then. Hulu, meanwhile, is just short of Netflix’s top tier premium plan at $19.99 a month, though their content library and original slate is nowhere near Netflix’s.
Why is this happening other than the obvious “Disney wants more money” explanation? Well, it’s about how they want more money.
Disney has said that their ad supported-tiers have proven to be profitable, so they’re trying to drive customers into those tiers which cost less, but Disney can make lots of money from the ads. It’s…how cable TV worked.
The other reason is that Disney is just trying to get everyone into large bundles. Hulu and Disney Plus are going to be combined into a single app sometime soon, and they want everyone to get a “premium bundle” of $19.99 a month that has both services. Of course it costs $2-6 more than each of them individually, so unless you have both already, it would still be a price increase.
In the wake of this news, many lament that a service like Disney Plus has doubled its price in a year while the overall quality of its offerings has fallen significantly between many Star Wars and Marvel project, with few exceptions. Though as it remains a family staple (Bluey!), many simply cannot give it up.
Oh and in case all this wasn’t enough, Disney is following Netflix down the password sharing rabbit hole, where they will start cracking down on that practice and making you add additional family members through an additional monthly cost. This actually worked out great for Netflix, so it’s no surprise to see other streamers adopting it now.
As ever, anyone can cancel any of these services at any given time, including getting them for a month, binging shows they’ve missed, then dropping them. But I would not be shocked if we are heading toward fixed contracts for services and then the conversion back to old school cable TV would be complete. Things have not really gone according to plan here.
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