Disney+ Loses 700,000 Subscribers Following Price Increase

[icanhazmac]

I think the adult pretenders (actors) are overpaid, as well

I agree to a degree but tis the nature of the beast.

Subscription prices going up ≠ content creators getting paid more

One of many problems in this industry

You would have to admit that if everyone pirates, then no one gets paid.

I beg to differ. Hulu (for example) employs, not only actors but writers, camera operators, set builders, wardrobe and makeup teams, food service, janitorial staff, finance folks, IT staff and more. As wages are artificially increased via minimum wage or union strikes, the cost to the "studios" also goes up.

I acknowledge that shareholders and the c suite also make more but lets not pretend that all the other folks down the chain don't get paid as well, no one works for free and pirates pay no one.

 

[jgdeschamps]

In my case (living in Mexico,) Disney+ used to cost the equivalent to US$6.00 and was turned into Disney+ with ads. If I wanted Disney+ with no ads, I had to literally pay more than double what I was paying for the service, costing the same as my Netflix 4K subscription. Cancellation was a no brainer and immediate.

 

[commanderclif]

Just learned from my son in college an hour from home that he can't use my Hulu/Disney account there at his apartment. Both Disney and Hulu had said he wouldn't be blocked so I'll have to reach out to them. Certainly not adding him as a family member for some $13 a month. Anyone know if its easy to set up a VPN like connection on his Apple TV that would appear that he is in my home?

 

[Amazing Iceman]

I use VZW on a bare minimum shared plan with family and pay only $10/mo

I’m personally into cost minimization and not paying a huge bill for services that also “include others”

Just a different approach for me

In my case I’m with T-Mobile because it has worked for me for over 20 years. The free services are only perks and not the reason why I’m using their services.
I pay more than you because I need their higher plans.
But $10/month is very tempting.

 

[thebart]

My Plex server is the best investment I've made ever since I saw the writing on the wall with all of these price increases and password sharing limitations.

I keep hearing about Plex servers but where do people get the content from? Because buying all that content is expensive! Or are we just talking about piracy here?

 

[t0rqx]

Let this be a warning for Apple.

 

[DrRadon]

I have no clue why people are paying for YTTV or DTVs beyond sports (I think Sports must be THE reason)

Live sports is the prime product for any station or streamer. This is where you can run ads and people will stick around, this is where you can charge high because people want to be there in the moment instead of being spoiled or watching it later illegally. This is why you see increases in games and matches in so many sports or sport like products. I think the nfl has like 97 of the 100 highest rating drawing tv broadcasts in the USA in an average year. Networks like USA only are relevant to advertisers because wwe drives their average up so much that the entire station generates more ad revenue. It’s quite the fascinating field. But also very fan unfriendly because there is just to much stuff and it’s getting more and more expensive to actually see it. I think if you want to see every nfl game while being in the USA you’ll have to pay a couple of thousand dollar per year.

Just as with streaming for me that just lead to watching a lot less. I remember watching the matches in European soccer competitions while nowerdays I just miss the entire thing because it’s paywalled somewhere. But just like Disney in this example it financially seems to pan out for the companies offering so we’ll see how all of that works out in 40 years when a generation grew up being paywalled missing the opportunity to grew deep rooted fandom - but I guess at that point todays company leadership will have gotten their bonuses and retired. 😀

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I keep hearing about Plex servers but where do people get the content from? Because buying all that content is expensive! Or are we just talking about piracy here?

You can either pirate or rip it from physical media like DVDs or BluRays, whatever floats your boat. Physical media isn't necessarily expensive all the time. Many things go on sale periodically. For audiobooks sites like audible don't have DRM, so it's easy to buy and host it yourself.

 

[Obioban]

Just learned from my son in college an hour from home that he can't use my Hulu/Disney account there at his apartment. Both Disney and Hulu had said he wouldn't be blocked so I'll have to reach out to them. Certainly not adding him as a family member for some $13 a month. Anyone know if its easy to set up a VPN like connection on his Apple TV that would appear that he is in my home?

If you both have something like a Unifi router locally, super easy to tunnel his Apple TV to your house through a site to site VPN.

 

[surferfb]

Just learned from my son in college an hour from home that he can't use my Hulu/Disney account there at his apartment. Both Disney and Hulu had said he wouldn't be blocked so I'll have to reach out to them. Certainly not adding him as a family member for some $13 a month. Anyone know if its easy to set up a VPN like connection on his Apple TV that would appear that he is in my home?

Look into Tailscale - free, super easy to set up and will fix that right up for you. They have an AppleTV client.

How to Make Netflix Think You’re Watching From Home

This article explains how to make Netflix think you're watching from home, even when you're somewhere else.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[DrRadon]

I keep hearing about Plex servers but where do people get the content from? Because buying all that content is expensive! Or are we just talking about piracy here?

The prime reason for using plex is piracy. I suppose you could rip your old dvd collection to it as well.

It depends on how much you watch really. If you save your 10 40 or even 140 per month and you watch like two movies and a show you’ll be of very cheap. If you want to binge some terrible stuff daily it’s going to cost you.
What I like in my Apple TV library is picking up classics when they are on sale. You know, that stuff that even in the past tended to not be on Netflix, ad it to my permanent streaming library without a stream your own stuff fee (until that comes around some day. 🥹). Idk if it’s a good example, but something like a pulp fiction often comes up for 3,99 and then you just have it. House of dragon or the last of us probably regularly drops to 12,99.,you know stuff you actually want to own. In that respect it’s also awesome that Apple fully refunds you even if you already watched the movie. I don’t do this often, but if a movie is just embarrassingly bad I’ll just refund it so it dos not clutter my library. Last time that happened was with girl you know it’s true be for Christmas. I try to maintain a ratio where I keep the majority of stuff I buy, not abusing the system, but loving that it exists,

In the Apple year end sale I bought like five movies that are all great for 20-25 in total. And that’s a height spending month. Most month I will buy nothing, or very little like a show or a classic movie on sale or a fresher release. So that’s like a range from 0-25.

Granted I am old and also have a gazillion dvds and Blu-ray’s.

Also older shows are cheaper on dvd than to buy on streaming. I picked up season one of heros for 2€ yesterday. Save the cheerleader, save the world.
When I thought about selling my 24 dvds I was seeing nobody pays for that and replacing it with streaming would have cost me multiples. So if you want to have that show just eBay it. It’s going to be Pennie’s on the hour of contend you get.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Plex Server doesn't come with come with content like the streaming services unless you go out and BUY physical media and spend entire weekends ripping them to files which sounds much more expensive than the $3 price increase at Disney. What do you watch on Plex?

That's assuming you've only started digitizing everything. A lot of people have accumulated media over the years. I'm currently self-hosting a huge variety of movies/shows/animations, as well as my audiobook library. It's also not just a price increase at Disney, but also across all the other streaming services as well over months and years. With Plex you get all of your media in one place and with a one time payment (or if you prefer, pirated entirely for free). These ongoing streaming costs add up quick.

 

[turbineseaplane]

That's assuming you've only started digitizing everything. A lot of people have accumulated media over the years. I'm currently a huge variety of hosting movies/shows/animations, as well as my audiobook library. It's not just a price increase at Disney, but also price increases across all the other streaming services as well over months and years. With Plex you get all of your media in one place and with a one time payment. These costs add up quick.

A great point … I actually run my audiobook repository on my Plex as well as a separate music library just for my Bose SoundTouch speakers to stream off.

Having a server around is really cool

 

[bier-meister]

I again refused to accept the price increase when the popups appeared and they always charge what my previous sub price was. Still paying €84 a year.

 

[webkit]

Let this be a warning for Apple.

Warning? This could actually be a sign that the amount of lost subscriptions revenue can potentially be much less than the added revenue generated by the higher prices.

 

[Marty80]

I use physical media and itunes to watch movies & tv shows. I never had any interest in the subscription model.

 

[dankron]

Hike the price up, continues to produce the same $#!T content... no wonder people are leaving

 

[Dorfdad]

My Plex server is the best investment I've made ever since I saw the writing on the wall with all of these price increases and password sharing limitations.

I always see people stating this, but I don't get it. It seems you have to have a ton of your own ripped videos or content for this to be of any value. Disney apps etc shows are not publicly available so unless your just pirating content plex seems very limited for Most users. Maybe im wrong.

 

[Obioban]

I always see people stating this, but I don't get it. It seems you have to have a ton of your own ripped videos or content for this to be of any value. Disney apps etc shows are not publicly available so unless your just pirating content plex seems very limited for Most users. Maybe im wrong.

Piracy is easy and has everything, including content you can’t stream on any service.

 

[Vahn21]

I gave up on Disney+ after the 380% increase in price

 

[redpandadev]

The thing about Disney+ is this - with other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, even to some extent Paramount+ but definitely the Live TV services, they can and do cite a rise in licensing costs for content. In the case of Disney, they own all of the content, so there's less justification.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The thing about Disney+ is this - with other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, even to some extent Paramount+ but definitely the Live TV services, they can and do cite a rise in licensing costs for content. In the case of Disney, they own all of the content, so there's less justification.

Yep ... pure money grab because they can

Vote with your wallet folks

(which may mean keep paying and enjoying!)

 

[wanha]

simple free market capitalism.

so is competing on price, so it's not much of an explanation if you leave it at that

 

[Jamie0003]

I gave up with streaming a while ago and just buy stuff I like on iTunes, never lost any content as of yet including stuff that’s no longer on the store

 

[techfreak23]

I agree to a degree but tis the nature of the beast.



You would have to admit that if everyone pirates, then no one gets paid.

I beg to differ. Hulu (for example) employs, not only actors but writers, camera operators, set builders, wardrobe and makeup teams, food service, janitorial staff, finance folks, IT staff and more. As wages are artificially increased via minimum wage or union strikes, the cost to the "studios" also goes up.

I acknowledge that shareholders and the c suite also make more but lets not pretend that all the other folks down the chain don't get paid as well, no one works for free and pirates pay no one.

While I agree with your general sentiment, a tipping point is reached with all of the content split between several services along with continual price increases. Unfortunately, everything is about infinite growth and keeping shareholders happy, which is really not sustainable in the long run. The market pushes back to force them to change their strategies.

Also, not everyone goes directly back to pirating. A lot of people don’t have the know how or the patience. There are those that will still pay to outright own the content, as long as the option remains, through physical media or digital stores. Then some of them will self host that content. It’s likely a much smaller percentage of the people that buy their content instead of subscriptions, but they still do it. Unfortunately, not all content is available for purchase.