Disney Plus to Raise Prices by $3 a Month as It Launches Tier with Ads
cnet.com
cnet.com
This, yet again, showcases to the people claiming the "ad experience is optional" are ignoring the fact that the new "normal" price will be the ad experience, and that ad-less will be a premium tier priced accordingly. We've seen it numerous times, but yet people still repeat the same tired defense.
It is highly unlikely Disney will extract the full $3 from ad revenue, therefore this is just a price discrimination strategy disguised as the illusion of choice.
We can be mad about it; because they make the deal we signed up to materially worse and invalidate all previous arguments to their defense historically.
"Disney+ costs a lot, but at least theres no ads"
now:
"Disney+ can be cheaper with ads!" (dismissing the fact that it's the same price and still more expensive than alternatives that existed without ads)
That's the problem. Companies can do a thing, then people can criticize them for it. An almost 40% price increase is worthy of criticism.
People jump to defend it with "but you get a choice!" While ignoring that your choice is either: Pay the massive price hike OR get a substantially worse user experience. That's a pretty terrible "choice," and that too is deserving of critique.
Jumping to defend companies treating people this way is exactly WHY companies feel they can treat people this way. It is a destructive cycle. Soon we'll have micro-transactions in streaming and people will jump to defend the "choice" of that too.
You have a third choice, you could take your dollars elsewhere to get more bang for your buck.
This is true if you're just looking at entertainment in general (and that's a fair approach). If you specifically want Disney+'s content, there are only two choices (plus the implicit "choose not to have access").
We can dislike a company's business practices despite them being obviously valid and legal.
And then you can schedule your entire year around which individual months you want to be subscribed to say Netflix or Hulu.
Maybe call it Go binge me
I imagine if enough people do this, companies will counter-act by making certain shows only available to loyal users. "This is a Platinum Plus show; you need at least platinum level 3 to watch this; watch 100 hours to level up!"
The user sets up a profile with a list of shows they like, and the website tells which streaming service is the best one to subscribe to. Extra credit if it has an option for "I prefer shows which are in the process of being released weekly/I count shows I can binge all at once."
And -- it is a bit of a stretch, but maybe "binge-o" is a good name.
Basically, what I'm saying is, as long as every company wants to withhold the content I like behind a paywall the size of tons of content I don't want, ShowRSS + uTorrent = the pirate's life for me. Yo-ho.
(Legitimately, if I was able to pay for just the individual shows I watch, I would pay for 100% of them. But no one offers that option, so... shrug )
Mostly the "cost" of staying up to date with best piracy practices doesn't seem worth it, to me.
I happen to know the price of hulu+disney+ is around $20 currently (because I just canceled my subscription, haha). I vaguely recall that is pretty close to the retail cost of a season of a show, around a decade ago, I think. So it seems like an OK deal in that context -- I watched way more than one season of a single show on the two services, per month (but like, I want to cut down on my passive content consumption anyway).
Personally I don't get super into particular shows -- so, on Netflix I suppose they have The Office (I'm not sure actually it is just an example), but on Hulu they have Mr Mayor... if focusing down to a couple streaming service means that I have to chance the specific "lighthearted, vaguely sarcastic but still comforting workplace comedy" in my lineup, I don't think this is a huge cost.
I dunno. Lots of companies seem to treat their streaming offerings as undifferentiated commodities, so why shouldn't we, right?
Because the things I enjoy watching are highly differentiated? Shrug
Sure they assume this is basically free money, anyone that doesn't want to pay extra just has to put up the adverts, anyone that doesn't can pay extra. The board likely love this idea.
Disney is a giant corporation, "grabbing" money is why they exist.
I'm not a Disney+ subscriber or even a fan of voluntary subscriptions but we should all be more outraged by food and housing prices than the cost of entertainment.
The increase is more than inflation, which is already high.
This will not be the last increase. I predict bi-yearly increases that keep the pricing well ahead of inflation.
It won't be the last price increase and it's nothing to do with inflation no matter what they say or indicate. I agree you'll see bi-yearly increases from every streaming service since they will all follow each other's lead. In 10 years Disney+ will most likely be twice the price it is today.
They will raise prices until people stop paying which I suspect won't be happening for a very long time if ever.
Prime, netflix etc etc, it's not just another $x, it's a lot of money when you add it up, particularly when Disney are not adding any additional value for doing so and instead just doing pure profiteering. There are a lot of companies out there seeing all the price increases in things and just using it as an excuse to increase there profits.
It was both distracting, annoyning and an ad in all but name. You would still call it an ad if the characters in the show also acted in the commercial, right?
Edit: Or said a different way - they're adding ads to the current subscription and "launching" a higher tier with no ads.
Discovery, post merger, seems to be interesting in refocusing Warner back on creating quality content that people actually are interested in - what a concept!
https://www.axios.com/2022/08/10/disney-surpasses-netflix-gl...
Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. It's absolutely dizzying to think how fast they are going to blow past Netflix with Disney+ alone.
It must be stressful to be in leadership at Netflix right now. How do you compete? More Chaos Monkeys? It's clear the differentiator is no longer engineering but IP.
That's been obvious for a very long time. It's why stuff like Stranger Things exists and is being milked. NF leadership have been playing that game for a long time now, they knew the time of reckoning would come; the question is whether they managed to build enough defences to resist the predicted storm and stay afloat in the long term.
Well. No surprise given how much buy-ups and mergers the regulators tolerated... Out of the list for popular franchises, Disney owns the top two (MCU/26 B$, Star Wars/10 B$) and has significant involvement in the third place (Spider-Man). Additionally, they own Avatar (which is the most profitable movie ever made), The Simpsons, Indiana Jones, the entire catalog of Pixar, the entire classic and re-made OG Disney IP and a ton of other stuff [1].
Of the really popular stuff, the only things Disney doesn't own are Harry Potter (which is a complicated dumpster fire not just given the tendency of JKR to set her own life work ablaze, but also IP-rights-wise [2]), the DC Universe (which hasn't managed to stay even close to competitive with MCU), Star Trek (which went off Netflix to Paramount+) and James Bond.
The future of entertainment is scary - Disney needs to be broken up, or the government needs to step in and mandate that copyright holders have to provide fair and equal streaming rights to everyone, similar to the music industry (which managed to get the hint on its own, and now there's more than healthy competition in the market with OG Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and a boatload of smaller ones).
[1] https://ifilmthings.com/disney-owns/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22770469/harry-potter-st...
Should new Star Wars be a big part of what I watch? I enjoy them, but I'm undecided.
MCU just feels like rubbish, but it prints money for reasons I just can't figure out.
In contrast, the MCU is the perfect execution of "how to make a movie out of a boatload of source material". IMHO, them sticking to the lore well enough that the die-hard nerds don't have much to whine was the key decision that made the MCU what it is... but now that the MCU has gotten so absurdly large, it's going to be interesting if they can keep up with that attention to detail.
Disney+ sure, but Disney is the Goliath in entertainment and has been around for close to 100 years!
> in India they have hotstar as a property which shows live sports and is huge
On the other hand, Disney did lose the rights to stream Indian Premier League https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-wins-tv-rights-loses-str...
Disney has more subscriptions than Netflix, when you add together the streaming services they offer. ("Subscribers" implies people, but that's much harder to count accurately.)
False.
Disney+, Hulu, Hotstar, and ESPN combined.
I think the lesson is that it is easy to have great growth numbers when you give your service away, loose billions, and triple count subscribers.
I fear that all of HBO's good scripted content will get axed in favor of cheap to produce reality crap.
Can you expand on this?