Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Disney Raising Price of Disney+ Subscription to $10.99 and Launching $7.99 Ad-Supported Tier

HobeSoundDarryl said:
Yes, your wallet, my wallet, our wallets...

UNLESS... the collective of consumers as a group decides the value is not worth the price hike. If everyone refuses to pay more, the price hike will be "delayed for further analysis" or similar. The problem with our system- capitalism- is that consumers as a group may gripe- sometimes loudly- but they then just pay. In doing so, they reward all sellers for raising prices & profit. From the sellers perspective, they did a great thing because the market voted with their wallets and paid up. Bonuses earned. Record revenue from streaming reporting. Stock price goes up. It's all "win!" for the sellers when consumers just pay more.

The key to capitalism actually working correctly is the balance of sellers trying to get as much as they can and buyers demanding the most for the least possible price... with the latter holding the ultimate card to play if any seller gets too greedy: the power of "NO!" Unfortunately, for the last decade or two, the consumer side of the equation seems to have forgotten that immense power, opting to just roll over almost every time.

As long as "we" (as a group) keep doing that, expect prices to just keep rising... not so much because of terms like inflation or wars or climate change or shipping or pandemics... but simply because we just pay. If we ever choose to not "just pay" (as a group), sellers will BEND (first) because they desperately need the revenue more than "we" should need the non-essential stuff for sale.
Click to expand...
Thank you. This is what I've been saying for years
 
  • Like
Reactions: TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
Jensend said:
And you can watch anything on the service at any time.
Paying the price of a movie ticket to watch a couple seasons of an ad-free TV show during a month long subscription is a pretty good deal, in my opinion. Heck, both of the current subs I have, Paramount+ and Apple+, are free.

Digital media—video games, movies, TV shows, books—are just about the cheapest and most accessible they’ve ever been.
90’s me would be especially surprised with how cheap video games are. Cheap bundles, subscription libraries, and free giveaways of great games mean you can build a library for very little money.
Click to expand...
Yes even with the prices of streaming a month, it's still more to buy even older movies.
No reason a decades old movie should still be $15-20+. I can just sub one month for cheaper, watch the movie i want and anything else I like for a whole month. I just remember to cancel instantly so it only goes that month without renewal.
 
"advertising is the future of streaming profits, not subscriber growth and revenue" - analyst just now on CNBC
 
Almost every major streaming service raises their prices once or twice a year. Nothing new about that. Disney+ is really more for people with kids. Mostly kids programming/movies on Disney, although adults can be entertained a bit too. ESPN+ was a joke though with limited amount of sports games broadcast live, mostly just talk show garbage. Hulu is good, but their live TV is overpriced and I had a lot of streaming issues with it on certain channels with the video pausing/freezing. And no it wasn't my internet, it was Hulu's issue. Recorded and on demand streaming worked well though. One really annoying thing with Hulu Live TV is they turn the commercials's volume WAY up!
 
compwiz1202 said:
Exactly nothing ever drops. They just won't raise prices for longer.
Click to expand...

Sometimes prices do drop. As this article is about Disney products, one example is Hulu which dropped the price of their basic plan from $7.99 to $5.99 in early 2019.

They raised it to $6.99 in 2021 and are raising it again to $7.99 in December but $7.99 is what they had previously been charging before the drop in 2019.
 
  • Like
Reactions: compwiz1202
chewbaka said:
Yep… if someone really loves film, and isn’t just looking for cheap, light entertainment, disc really is the way to go. I can watch what I want, when I want, without worrying about subscribing to a zillion services or whether it’s in my streaming rotation that month. The only thing I’ve streamed this year is Stranger Things.

If you’re patient for sales, it’s usual cheaper than iTunes too. I paid $5 for a large portion of my collection. It helps that I like old stuff.
Click to expand...
Any place you look specifically for sales ?
 
jonnysods said:
It's simple. Disney's stocks have plummeted and they are bleeding subscribers - this is the classic corporate playbook to keep shareholders happy.
Click to expand...

Bleeding subscribers? Did you not read the last paragraph of the article?

"Disney announced the pricing changes during its earnings announcement for the third fiscal quarter of 2022. Disney+ gained a total of 14.4 million subscribers during the quarter, and the company now has more than 221 million subscribers across its streaming platforms."
 
  • Like
Reactions: sloheim
Reworded, this would say "Disney will now be inserting ads into your streaming while the cost remains the same. However, you can choose to upgrade to a new tier that will remove the ads for just an additional $3/month."
 
Juicy Box said:
There are tradeoff for everything, but when it comes to the SW side of things, there are free options. The options that cost money could be well worth it to some.

I have the lifetime Plex Pass, and before that, I used iTunes and the Computer app. The Computer app is free, but I think Plex is well worth it, especially the lifetime Plex Pass.

It will eventually pay for itself versus paying for streaming, especially for people the rewatch the same content over and over. I personally know multiple that are paying for Peacock for only The Office. I got the first 7 seasons of The Office on DVD for only $5 total at a yard sale.

A small investment could pay off in the long run.
Click to expand...
Completely skipped what I said. I also am a Plex lifetime user. You act like you just rip movies and they magically are working in Plex. You have to have the storage capacity to store those movies. You want the stream quality to be as high as 4K HDR for something like Westworld or Blacklist you are talking a full blown storage array just to store the content.

Yes you can rip to a giant external hard drive and pray daily the disk doesn't die. But to properly set it up you are talking a raid array with spinning disks and SSD caching layers. Trust me it's not cheap I have a great setup. It also cost me five years worth of subscriptions to these services. That doesn't count the time of maintaining the hardware ripping the content, fixing metadata, etc.

Now if you are ripping DVDs and watching in 720P sure its great and pretty fast solution. If you're trying to 1:1 replace a streaming service it's not that simple.
 
ratspg said:
Any place you look specifically for sales ?
Click to expand...
I set camelcamelcamel alerts for new releases I want. Anything newly released is usually $10-15 on sale within six months, say Black Friday or Prime Day. eBay is great for buying back catalog titles that have been on disc forever already. I’m perfectly happy when used media, so long as the disc isn’t damaged.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back