By: Nick Gambino
Netflix has announced that they are once again raising prices on subscriptions. There was a time when the cost of subscribing to the streaming service was no more than a couple cups of coffee a month. Now it’s several cups and it’s likely that it’ll eventually cost the equivalent of a high-end meal.
The price change hit on Wednesday. Those lucky enough to still be subscribed to the ad-free Basic Plan saw the price rise from $9.99 a month to $11.99. You have to be grandfathered in to use this Netflix plan as it’s not available to new members.
The Premium Plan which allows you to watch in 4K across multiple devices is going from $19.99 to $22.99. As for the two other plans, the entry ad-supported and the Standard, those are remaining at the same price – $6.99 and $15.49 respectively.
“Our starting price is extremely competitive with other streamers and at $6.99 per month in the U.S., for example, it’s much less than the average price of a single movie ticket,” Netflix said in their Q3 release.
And that is true. While the Premium Plan feels steep, you really do get a pretty good bang for your buck. To gain access to thousands and thousands of titles right at your fingertips from just about anywhere and in 4K nonetheless, $22.99 is more than fair.
Now that Netflix offers an ad-supported tier, anyone looking to keep the price down, can just sign up for the $6.99 plan, essentially partaking in a hybrid on-demand/TV model. Anyone with any sort of prediction skills could see that this would eventually happen. Netflix and every other video streaming platform couldn’t just skate by with monthly subscribers alone. That was bound to plateau, forcing them to return to the most lucrative income stream there is – sponsorships.
“Netflix changed the entire game for the way in which we consume media, but history proves that the tried-and-true is always the most reliable,” Andrew Tropeano, a technology expert with NWT Media (www.nwtmediagroup.com), said. “There’s just no use denying that sponsorships or advertisements offer the best way to monetize audio-visual content.”
The last time Netflix raised its prices was March 2022. Although it’s a reasonable hike, I hope they don’t make it a habit of charging more every two years. They’ll eventually price the average consumer out.
