Netflix, Disney+: soon new price increases?

Streaming services are starting to swarm so much that we end up regretting the days when there was only the simple war Netflix vs Prime Video ! Today, we must add Disney + and Apple TV + in the battle before seeing HBO Max land in France probably next year. When we look at our American friends, it’s even worse with Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock and other services that we don’t even know exist in our latitudes. Although subscription prices were at their lowest at the start – just to attract customers with the smell of savings – the increase in expenses linked to original productions ended up weighing in the balance and increases seemed inevitable. Thus, the companies have added a few euros to the sums requested, starting with Amazon.

The Lord of Euros!

Yes, when we get down to produce series with great blows of hundreds of millions of euros as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it is precisely necessary to find these millions of euros! And we may be called Jeff Bezos and be one of the richest men in the world, but we will still prefer to help ourselves to the pockets of subscribers than to our yacht budget. As we told you about a few weeks ago in our article, you will have to pay €69.99 instead of €49.99 to enjoy one year of Amazon Prime from September 15. At the competition, it’s not better and everyone seems to want to follow the same path.

Read also: Our selection of not very “woke” Netflix films

Disney+ will launch its new subscription with advertising on December 8 in the United States for $7.99 per month.

The ad-free monthly subscription price will increase to $10.99. pic.twitter.com/Z2CZxY3b89

— Series Info (@SeriesUpdateFR) August 10, 2022

Future inflation?

” Everything is increasing right now, my little lady ! »… This global chorus seems to sound like that of this summer hit that buzzes nonstop in the ear of our wallets. This is how a few days ago it is on the Disney+ side that an upcoming price spike in the United States has been announced. The ad-free subscription at $7.99 will be sold starting December 8 at $10.99. An increase the air of nothing of 38%. There will always be a $7.99/month offer, but you’ll have to resolve to take advantage of it by watching 4 minutes of ads every hour on average. We are not yet at TF1, but it is still not brilliant. If nothing is official for the moment, expect that this inflation will soon also affect France. The monthly subscription without ads should then reach €11.99/month. On the side of the red N, we take notes and prepare to follow suit. To survive ?

Netflix is ​​losing subscribers, but…

We learned a few weeks ago that Netflix had lost more than 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. What to wonder if the quality of the programs offered was the reason for this drastic drop. A study of the Attest research platform on American soil tends to prove that this is in no way the case. On the contrary, Netflix would even have increased its total hours watched since the number of working-age Americans watching Netflix at least once a week has increased by 2.8% since the start of the year, which brings the total figure to a colossal 71.2% of this segment of the population. At the same time, the same audience at Prime Video fell 5.2% to a total share of 41.3%. For Disney+ and HBO Max, the drop is 2.2% for respective shares of 32.4% and 26.4%. Suffice to say that there is still a gulf that separates the different platforms in this niche.

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However, Netflix raised prices earlier this year, which didn’t really help gain subscribers. At a time when growing inflation calls into question our every expense, Netflix no longer seems so essential on a daily basis. Aware of the problem, the American company will soon also offer a cheaper version but with ads. This “light” subscription should also come with a truncated catalog of certain programs. But that’s not all since for Netflix, this slowdown in their growth comes from the sharing of accounts. In Latin America, the platform is already testing a system to make overly generous subscribers pay more. We can’t wait to see how this practice will be perceived by French consumers if by chance it were adopted on our soil…