This past October, Netflix raised prices for its basic and premium plans to $11.99 and $22.99 a month, respectively. For Netflix Premium, this new price is almost double of what it was when the plan was released in 2013.
Netflix decided to increase prices due to rising costs of producing movies and TV shows. They are also venturing into new categories of entertainment such as video games and sports.
RM Netflix users are overall unhappy that they will have to pay more to watch their favorite movies and TV programs.
“I know that a lot of streaming services have increased their prices, but I think the rate that Netflix is doing it doesn’t really match up with their catalog. Even though they have good shows, $23 is pretty expensive,” freshman Giacomo Galdzicki said.
Though Galdzicki thinks that Netflix communicated the change well, he believes that they should have provided customers with more reasons for the increase beforehand.
“I think the content on Netflix is really good, but there is too much stuff that they are missing for it to be justifiable and for the huge prices to make sense,” freshman Nadia Blackman said.
A possible implication of this price hike includes lack of subscriber growth. The last time Netflix increased prices was in the beginning of 2022. After that, subscriber count sharply decreased, with one of the reasons possibly being the implemented price increase.
A Forbes article stated that the consumer research firm, Attest, “examined second quarter streaming in the United States and found that Netflix was the only streaming service to see a decline in second quarter. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the only one of the big services to institute a price increase.”
If subscribers are able to justify the price for content they are constantly watching, Netflix may actually benefit from this, which will be shown in their next earnings report estimated to be in January.
These increases come after Netflix implemented password-sharing restrictions this summer, which has faced backlash from the community but increased subscriber count. Netflix stated that users sharing passwords with family and friends outside of their household impacted “[their] ability to invest in great new TV and films for [their] members” while users think that extra households should be included in the subscription, rather than being an extra charge.
Netflix also added a new plan, Standard with Ads, last year. This plan has not been affected by price increases, and is still $6.99 a month, cheaper than both Disney Plus and Max’s (formerly HBO Max) ad-supported plan. Netflix has planned new perks for Standard with Ads subscribers to boost growth, such as being able to download movies and TV for offline use.
