The amount you’ll pay for Netflix each month just went up, and the question I have is this: Is the quality of content Netflix is putting out worth the extra fee?
“While we mostly paused price increases as we rolled out paid sharing, our overall approach remains the same — a range of prices and plans to meet a wide range of needs, and as we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders.
So that’s the $64,000 question: Is the value Netflix is offering subscribers worth the extra monthly fee?
Before we answer that question, let’s get down to brass tacks. The actual increase isn’t a lot, and it doesn’t affect every plan, but it comes on the heels of other big moves by Netflix, including a major crackdown on password sharing.
For customers on the ads tier ($6.99) and standard tier ($15.49) the price will remain the same going forward—for now. For customers on the basic plan (which you can no longer sign up for) the new price per month is going up from $9.99 to $11.99. Subscribers to the premium plan, which includes Ultra HD streaming, the monthly subscription price is jumping from $19.99 to $22.99.
Now, you might say, “Well that’s just $2 or $3 per month, or about $24 o $36 per year, which isn’t that much!” And this is true. But it’s a 20% / 15% price-hike nonetheless, and subscribers aren’t getting any new benefits for the increased rate.
Nor is Netflix the only subscription consumers need to consider when calculating their monthly budget. Other streaming services are also getting more expensive. The price for Hulu and Disney+ (both separate or as a bundle, including the ESPN+ bundle) just went up on the 12th of this month.
Other services, like PlayStation Plus and Max, have seen price-hikes in recent weeks.
A few dollars here and a few dollars there may not seem like much but it ends up becoming death by a thousand papercuts. Or, perhaps more appropriately, the boiling frog metaphor in which a frog placed in cold water will not notice the temperature slowly rising to a boil until it’s too late.
Whatever the case, consumers need to start really asking whether or not all these services are worthwhile and take a long hard look at the cumulative total all these add up to, because it may be time to start prioritizing which streamers are actually delivering on the promise of high-quality streaming content.
As for Netflix, the streaming giant certainly has some big hits and great shows—I still need to start The Fall Of The House Of Usher because I started Lupin and am definitely enjoying it!—but they have a lot of misses, too. The increasing focus on cheap, reality TV and the constant cancellations of quality content doesn’t help matters. That extra $3/month won’t bring back GLOW or The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance.
The fact is, managing streaming services is a juggling act. If you want to save money, but still see the shows you care about, you need to constantly be mindful of which subscriptions to cancel and which to reactivate, and that’s not easy for most of us (or at least not for me, though my equation is rather different given I write about so many of these shows and movies for work).
So is it time? Will you be dropping Netflix after this latest price-hike and password sharing crackdown, or is the value still right? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.
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