Netflix To Raise Prices For UK Subscribers By Up To 20% (theguardian.com) 70
Netflix is to raise prices for UK subscribers by up to 20% as it looks to invest more in programmes ahead of the arrival of deep-pocketed rival Disney's eagerly anticipated service later this year. From a report: The streaming company, which has not raised prices in the UK since 2017, is increasing the cost of a standard plan by 1 Pound ($1.26) to 8.99 Pound ($11.3) and premium by 2 Pound ($2.52) to 11.99 Pound ($15.1). The price of a basic plan remains unchanged at 5.99 Pound ($7.5). The company, which has 10 million UK subscribers, said new customers will pay the higher rates immediately, while the increases will be implemented for existing users "over the coming weeks." Netflix has already raised prices in the US, as well as a number of markets in Latin America and the Caribbean that also use US dollars, with increases across western Europe also expected.
Re: (Score:3)
That is the general problem with Services. Their prices will only go up, as they need to adjust to inflation and add features to make it competitive to others.
Be it streaming services, Cloud, Power and utility.... Prices will always go up. And being that much of products are becoming services, it stops us from the advantage of buying a product when it is cheap, or get it when it is new and use the heck out of it to get a lot of value from it.
While our income, or if we are a company profits, may not align
Re: (Score:2)
Netflix should get cheaper, as streaming costs go down and they lose expensive Disney content.
Hell yeah! (Score:1)
Netflix should get cheaper, as streaming costs go down and they lose expensive Disney content.
Yep!
I was an early subscriber to Netflix. It was great, DVDs in the mail and a free subscription to the streaming service. Nice! Some blockbuster movies were up there - like Raiders of the Lost Ark - and Doctor Who the new series. Then those blockbuster movies started to disappear and then they split the services.
Price went up. And then went up again. In the meantime, the things I wanted to watch disappeared. They brag about how many titles are up there but much of it is just shit. Not just 'B' movies, b
Re: (Score:2)
Price went up. And then went up again.
Of course they do. Anyone who didn't see this coming is an idiot. It's the same tactic as Uber and others. You flood the market with low prices, you don't even need to make money. When you get a dominant market status, then you raise prices higher than they were before (cable TV / regular taxi).
Re: (Score:2)
Netflix should get cheaper, as streaming costs go down and they lose expensive Disney content.
To the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if prices are going up now in part because they are losing Disney's content.
Simply put, we know that they are getting a good deal on Disney's content (despite Disney having raised the rates recently) because if they thought they could get a better return on their investment they'd have sunk that money into Netflix Originals that they can keep forever instead. The fact that they're continuing to spend that money on Disney means that Disney's content is bringing more v
Re: (Score:2)
That is the general problem with Services. Their prices will only go up, as they need to adjust to inflation
Netflix is raising prices much faster than inflation. This is a lame excuse.
Be it streaming services, Cloud, Power and utility.... .
My utility prices follow inflation. Just like most goods. Some other goods have their price rising faster for some reasons, but as long as they follow market forces I don't have any problem with it.
The problem with Netflix, is that they want to become a monopoly. Actually I don't even have a problem with that either, every company would like that. The real problem is that too many dumb idiots cheer when Netflix gets more content and
Re: (Score:2)
That is the general problem with Services. Their prices will only go up, as they need to adjust to inflation and add features to make it competitive to others.
Well that's a rather sweeping over-generalization, don't'cha think?
To pull from your own examples, cloud hosting costs for X resources are significantly lower today than they were just a few years ago. Likewise, despite how bad the situation is with ISPs, there's no denying that the cost for the same level of service has dropped significantly over the last few decades (e.g. 1 Gbps lines have gone from mind-bogglingly expensive, even for some businesses, to something middle-class homes can afford). Likewise,
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I had to lower my Netflix services to only one stream at a time. I mean I'm in a one-person household, why do I need to stream 2 things on Netflix at the same time. I didn't even realize that was an option until recently. Maybe it wasn't when I first signed up. I don't know.
So in reality, Netflix raising their rates made me review my plan and I'm still okay with it. My bill is lower and I still think it's a good deal. The bulk of my streaming costs still go towards basic internet and that's what
Re: Capitalism 101. (Score:1)
The article explicitly says they are raising prices in order to produce new content in order to compete with Disney. This is the opposite of a monopoly, comrade.
Re: (Score:2)
It smells like an excuse, to me...
Re:Capitalism 101. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that the opposite of what happened here? Netflix wasn't the first VOD Internet streaming subscription service, but they were the first big one, and they only began raising prices after major competitors such as Amazon and Hulu started getting serious.
The reason they're raising prices likely has more to do with the fact that licensing fees have been steadily increasing for a number of reasons, most notably that content owners and incumbent distributors finally woke up to the existential threat that Netflix and its kind pose to their business models. Back in the 2000s, Starz was more than happy to give a tiny company like Netflix a multi-year license for hundreds of major films, since it cost them nothing and they didn't expect that streaming would take off like it did. Fast forward a few years and it became clear to everyone in the cable and film industries that services like Netflix are the future, that they're operating on borrowed time before subscription streaming eats their lunch, and that they were fools for handing away streaming rights for pennies on the dollar of what they now realize those rights are actually worth. They've been scrambling ever since to set up their competing services while at the same time making it more and more expensive for Netflix to operate by increasing the rates that they demand for their content.
There are other reasons why their prices are going up, of course. To get away from increasing licensing fees, Netflix is trying to make more and more of its own content, enough to have something for everyone's interests, but that approach has huge up front costs (if I recall correctly, Netflix is spending over $8 billion on original content this year alone) and will continue going up in cost as they try to cover more and more tastes and interests, though it should eventually stabilize. There's also the fact that Netflix has made it clear that they have a good deal of self-awareness about the fact that they have a one-time window of opportunity to establish a solid foundation. They know that the honeymoon is ending and they want to make sure they'll be in a good place, so that means raising prices before Disney's and Apple's competing services arrive, that way they aren't dealing with fresh, bad PR right as those services become available.
Re: (Score:2)
There are other reasons why their prices are going up, of course.
Not the least of which are the way that major currencies like the GBP and USD are slowly tanking. Both are worth far less than they were in 2016.
Re: (Score:2)
While that was true last year and was used to explain a number of price adjustments made by various companies, it isn't true today. Current USD values are roughly on par with peak values from 2016 [macrotrends.net], and today's GBP is trading against the Euro at a better rate than it did for 11 of the 12 months in 2016 [macrotrends.net]. Both trends look to be positive or flat, rather than declining like you suggested.
MBA ideas....sigh. (Score:1)
Prices need to be low to curve piracy. (Score:2)
Netflix has done more then any organization to curve Movie Piracy. They did this by having their content available at a low cost. Before Netflix DVD Ripping was a big thing, because $30 for a DVD was often too much for a Movie, so it was considered practical to risk getting a Ripped copy. After Netflix got a good set of movies, it put a good dent in the need to Pirate a movie, because its rates were low enough and the tool was easy enough to watch what you wanted to watch. However if they keep raising ra
NF is slipping (Score:2)
And unless you are looking for another reason to sit on your ass for hours, do something else.
I'm real close to just going optical media with my subscription(if that is even an option anymore)
It seems like NF is another example of "hey, lets have AI figure out what people like and have it write the scripts, cast, etc"
That thinking leads to more of the same vacuous pablum.
New Service (Score:1)
Who the fuck is eagerly awaiting another streaming service?
Isn't competition supposed to ... (Score:2)
invest more in programmes ahead of the arrival of deep-pocketed rival Disney's eagerly anticipated service later this year.
It looks like Netflix are using the "threat" of a new player as an excuse for the exact opposite. So do they think they have managed to get enough people addicted, or just that the market isn't price sensitive?
Re: (Score:2)
Only when your business model doesn't revolve around building up a user base while losing money.
So do they think they have managed to get enough people addicted, or just that the market isn't price sensitive?
Nope, they just think they are rapidly running out of money. Netflix loves talking about it's revenue. The dirty word for them is cash flow, which in Q1 2019 was negative $380million, and that wasn't a one-off. They haven't had positive cash flow since 2014.
Re: (Score:1)
To get a £ symbol, you need to use "£"
"Pounds", not "Pound"! (Score:1)
Faulty Exchange Rate (Score:2)
Giving the "value" of the UK pound as $1.26 may be useful if someone was about to go on holiday across the Atlantic. If you are discussing entertainment prices, not so good.
If you compare average wages, US $47k and UK £27k, the rate changes to $1.74. If you compare what is left after Tax and healthcare I would, anecdotally, put it over $2.
If people in the US hear a price in the UK, they need to double it to get close to compare the dollar price. Likewise Brits, if you hear a US salary, halve it to