This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Some observers see another reason for the frequent price hikes: to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said as much during an August earnings call: “We’re obviously trying, with our pricing strategy, to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier.”
I'll cancel my account before I willingly subject myself to advertising. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I'm already in the process of replacing my streaming services with cheaper alternatives.
I'll give you a reason, pirating. Pirating with obfuscated networks (VPN, onion, etc) will never die. People just put it down because the convenience was worth the price. When it no longer is, ships will sail the seas again, and having everything already digital in these services will make it that much easier.
Raise prices. Blame "the liberal agenda". Profit.
Hulu is currently the only streaming service I still pay for, and that's mainly because TV shows are a removed to pirate (disk space and download times being the main annoyance), but it won't take more than one or two more price hikes for the balance to shift so that it's worth the effort to just go full pirate instead of forking out so much cash.
The fact that Disney just fully bought Hulu bodes very poorly too - I'll bet anything that it's going to get folded into Disney+ soon as a "pay an extra 15/month to access Hulu content, but only through your Disney+ membership sort of deal"
Here's a tip: I went to cancel my Hulu subscription, and they offered on my way out to instead lower my price for 6 months. I decided to go with it.
I can't guarantee the same would happen for others, but ultimately it's all gonna be a haggling situation.
Charge the analysts more first. I’m sure they’ll charge their tune.
Nope, because every time another one raises the price we cancel it. It’s working out quite well
Arrrrrr
Laughs in $0 a month payments for streaming services
Remember March 2012, when SOPA and PIPA were about to pass, and many websites were blacking out as a form of protest, some people were advocating for a "Black March" to have everyone boycott Big Media, pirated or not, for the entire month? Yeah sure it didn't spread like wildfire because of course, the population is already too addicted to popular culture to drop it cold-turkey, but at this rate people may be forced to give it a go by force.
