Netflix is raising prices, again | Hacker News Reader

Netflix is raising prices, again

npr.org

28 pointswmsmith37 comments

This finally got me to unsubscribe. I just don’t use it enough and don’t think it’s worth the money

I’ve also held out on paying for YouTube because I think it’s worth closer to $10/mo than the ~$20 it’s priced at

I'm a long term YouTube Premium nee Red subscriber and advocate. However, the price has now gotten so high that I'm canceling it.

The quality has decreased as creators have to find new and more intrusive ways to make money, and it's simply no longer the primary source of video entertainment for me. I'm fine with paying for content, but YouTube is no longer providing the value it once was.

May I ask, where do you go for video entertainment now?

I've been enjoying Curiosity Stream and Nebula. Pretty happy with both so far.

varies by country, but in the US, YouTube Premium looks to cost $14/mo, or $11.66 if paying for the year at once.

edit: that's for the individual plan; 5-member family plan is $23 in the US and I'm not sure whether you can pay for a year in advance.

I do use the YT Premium family for me and my wife. I basically only watch youtube on the TV - so being ads free is really neat - or use it for music on the computer. Since YT premium comes with YT music, I don't need spotify/apple music, so I do think it's a good value in the end.

But I don't have Netflix or Disney+ anymore

I’m curious what type of stuff you watch on YouTube. I would pay for YT but it doesn’t have traditional TV shows or movies like other streaming platforms. I mean it does have good content but it’s quite short form and dare I say it…disposable

What I find on YouTube is quite different from traditional movies and TV series. I don't watch YouTube for fiction / drama (I watch Netflix for that), but I find a lot of things that are, in my opinion, far better than Discovery Channel style content has ever been. A few examples of longer form content (mostly 15-60 minutes) that I enjoy...

Practical Engineering - A civil engineer's view of things in the world. How water flows above and below ground, bridge and building failures, trains, designing for safety, etc. His current series (a playlist called Practical Construction) is a phenomenal view of how infrastructure around us is built (in this case, a sewage lift station). https://www.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel

Little Chinese Everywhere - A woman from China, educated at least partially in Europe, travelling slowly over land from Switzerland to China (and now across many parts of China). She is sometimes with her German boyfriend and often with locals she meets along the way. She clearly has a background in geography and does a great job showing things I'd have trouble getting access to as an American and as an introvert. Seeing a sober view of deeply skilled artisans in Iran, hanging out with camel herders in Oman, exploring thousand-year-old Svan towers in Georgia, coop farming in Switzerland, etc. - things you just wouldn't get in exorbitantly expensive productions where things have to be made artificially dramatic and adhere to certain political viewpoints. https://www.youtube.com/@littlechineseeverywhere

Stuff Made Here - A inspiring set of devices / robots built in a surprisingly comedic way ("Why would I spend time having fun when I can build a robot to have fun for me?") and then judged with dry wit by the maker's spouse. Examples include a basketball hoop that will fix your bad shots, a pool cue that will do the same, and a CNC pumpkin carving machine. https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere

Up and Atom - Explorations of various topics in physics, math, and computer science. These explorations often include a look into the history behind the topics and practical / amusing applications in our day-to-day lives that might not be obvious. For example, how did religion historically affect the adoption and use of the number zero in different parts of the world? https://www.youtube.com/@upandatom

Technology Connections - Well researched deep dives into things that are all around us - toasters, refrigerators, HVAC, light bulbs, electric cars, the color brown, etc. He gets surprisingly technical while remaining mostly approachable. And something I wish was required training for all engineers, he goes into why the tech does and does not work well for the people that use it. https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections

The Charismatic Voice - An opera singer, educated in the biology and mechanics of the voice as well as music theory, shares her love of music by analyzing performances of various genres of popular music from the last 50 years. Her aim is clearly not to be a music critic, but to find the wonderful parts of the performances she analyzes and share the joy those parts create in her. She appears completely unreserved in expressing that joy, making it infectious. https://www.youtube.com/@TheCharismaticVoice

> and dare I say it…disposable

It's not like people pay for Netflix for enlightenment, or that their shows are all groundbreaking and life transforming.

I do watch a mix of different stuff:

- meme/video reacts

- tv show/anime/movie/book reviews and top lists

- travel vlogs

- general learning and curiosity

I feel the exact same with YouTube. I would pay for it but I wouldn’t pay what it costs now because I simply only watch maybe 3-10hrs of content a week.

I’d love to see them test a tier where you get something like 10hrs of ad free content a week for $5/month or something like that - it might get users like myself watching more and this upgrading to an unlimited tier. Audible do something similar and now Spotify are rolling out 20hrs of free audiobooks in their premium tier with the idea that people might upgrade.

From the article:

Netflix also announced it's raising the price for its most expensive streaming service by $2 to $23 per month in the U.S. — a 10% increase — and its lowest-priced, ad-free streaming plan to $12 — another $2 bump. The $15.50 per month price for Netflix's most popular streaming option in the U.S. will remain unchanged

I think this may be the straw for a lot of people. When times were good, I didn't much care, what's an extra dollar or two.

But the last couple years have been pretty brutal with shrinkflation, general inflation, rents/housing, gas, groceries, and other streaming services all lightening the wallet. I'm definitely way more picky now about services arbitrarily raising prices this year than any time before, at least, and I'm in a much better position than a lot of people.

> Netflix on Wednesday disclosed summertime subscriber gains that surpassed industry analysts' projections, signaling the video streaming service's crackdown on password sharing is converting __former freeloaders__ into paying customers.

Has the AP (the source of the article) always been this editorialized? I'm not sure how one could be a freeloader when someone is paying for the allotted usage of a subscription plan.

I understand now, Netflix limits the usage to those under 1 roof / IP but previously, they sold subscriptions that allowed N people to use the service under an account at a given time. Seems like that is just people leveraging the service they bought...not "freeloading".

One year of Netflix's 4k plan costs more than some 4k TV's. Admittedly, these sub $287 4k TV's aren't amazing, but still.

Still what? Is there or should there be any relationship between the price for creating and delivering media and the price for creating and delivering a device that can be used to watch the media?

Why are you comparing the cost of 2 unrelated things? How does the cost of paint compare to paintbrushes?

Because they are related and it is interesting. In economics terms, they would be considered compliments. The prices are moving in opposite directions, 4K TVs used to be considered "expensive" and streaming services "cheap", as opposed to now. So I could foresee a bunch of 4K TVs being purchased only to be used to stream 1080.

But that is indeed the point, see printers and ink cartridges

i think this is fine versus the below comments. People compared gas prices versus car prices.

This might be the end, content is lower and lower quality and prices higher and higher. Moreover there are a dozen streaming services and imho apple+ and max are way above

Yeh I fear this is the end of the glory days of streaming. There are too many platforms now asking for a non significant monthly fee. It’s easy to hit $50-$100 a month if you have all the popular platforms. Content on each platform has thinned out and is of mixed quality.

We’ll absolutely see a resurgence in piracy due to this.

They’re positioning to introduce a crapload of ads to lower tiers and become and ad supported service.

As they do this they have to use the YouTube strategy of “adding enough value” by raising prices to keep from undercutting the ad supported service.

Classic television executive thinking and just God awful user experience.

Netflix is quickly becoming the next Comcast.

reminder....dvds are a buck or 2 and can be ripped pretty reliably to a server.....I recommend you buy 100+ movies and start a collection this next year....

This sounds like a terrible alternative

- many shows are Netflix only, so you can’t get them on $1-2 DVDs - newer movies and shows are certainly not $1-2 per disc - DVD is at most 480p - buying a server is expensive

In order to save money you are proposing an inferior solution that…costs more money.

You can get DVDs for free at a library. Netflix's store brand TV shows being unavailable on DVD due to platform lock-in is unsurprising.

Is it legal to copy DVDs that you check out of the library if you don't distribute it?

It’s as legal as ripping a dvd you own. That is it violates the license, but I think it’s fair use and has never been prosecuted.

It’s also pretty much impossible to detect unless you distribute.

Same as ripping a dvd from a friend.

Not in the United States. In addition to the copyright violation, it's also a DMCA violation.

Unsubscribed. Also the contents were not so good as in the beginning. Would like to have video library back. It was 1,5 Euro for new movies.

Why don't they display the list of available shows to unsubscribed users?

They added 9m subscribers in Q3. Something is working for them.

Does it count if I sub for a month then unsub immediately after I'm done watching my show? Because I do that.

It counts if you were on the sub list as of the end of their reporting period. You won't be counted in the next quarter.

Added subs isn't a useful number -- net adds and/or churn is necessary to make sense of that.

but the lesson learned is that apparently people can't live without Netflix, so they can raise prices.

People complained and were up in arms agains password sharing, but not only they didn't cancel their subscriptions, but folks that were kicked out of the shared accounts also started paying.

When Disney+ announced they were banning password sharing, on the same day I cancelled the account and decided not to give them another cent.

It's almost certainly the result of banning password sharing. +9M subscribers in Q3, versus less than 3M added in Q3 last year.

Yep that was me. Was using a relatives Netflix for years until the password sharing ban came in. I instantly created an account

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