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Television

Netflix Plans To Raise Prices After Actors Strike Ends (wsj.com) 176

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Netflix plans to raise the price of its ad-free service a few months after the continuing Hollywood actors strike ends, the latest in a series of recent price increases by the country's largest streaming platforms. From a report: The streaming service is discussing raising prices in several markets globally, but will likely begin with the U.S. and Canada, according to people familiar with the matter. It couldn't be learned how much Netflix will raise prices by or when exactly the new prices will take effect.

Over the past year or so, the cost of major ad-free streaming services has gone up by about 25%, as entertainment companies look to bring their streaming platforms to profitability and lead price-conscious customers to switch to their cheaper and more-lucrative ad-supported plans. Streamers are also starting to look at how they can create new pricing tiers around exclusive programming, such as live sports, without running the risk of driving people away from their core offerings.
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Netflix Plans To Raise Prices After Actors Strike Ends More

Netflix Plans To Raise Prices After Actors Strike Ends

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  • Cable TV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @09:43AM (#63896669)

    All over again.

    • Looks like the profit is NEVER enough.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 )

        They have to raise prices since they don't have enough subscribers.

        Of course, they don't have enough subscribers because their content is mostly garbage that nobody wants to watch.

        Raising prices will just push even more subscribers away. Though clearly they are betting that it won't be enough to ruin the profit gain.

        • Re:Cable TV (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @11:03AM (#63896871)

          They have plenty of subscribers. They had 34 million subscribers at $9 a month in 2013 - that's $306 million a month.

          They have 238 million subscribers now - mostly, I assume, at the $15 or $20/month price. Even assuming they're all at the $7 ad-supported revenue, that's a monthly revenue of $1.666 BILLION monthly.

          Their revenue and subscribers has continued to go up every year. They are reaching market saturation.

          This is where you figure out how to improve the efficiency of your product - not raise prices.

          • Hah, well I guess in that case, 1.666 billion a month just isn't enough.

            And also, your numbers would suggest that quite a lot of people want to watch their "garbage that nobody wants to watch."

            The world is a strange place. It seems strange to me, at least.

        • It doesn't really sound like that. The idea of residuals on streaming doesn't really sit well with me. All it's going to do is bring back pay per screw. I recall a while ago reading some Hollywood derp saying Netflix should charge everybody something stupid like $5 per view, arguing that this is what people would otherwise spend at the theater, so people like him can get paid more for work they did 20 years ago and haven't touched it since.

          Why have we even come to this? My attitude towards work has always b

          • The streaming companies are making money with someone else's work, so why shouldn't these people who worked on these movies and series get paid too?

            • Because they already did make money.

              If you ever rent out your house, the people who made it aren't entitled to royalties. So why do we do that with movies?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by unrtst ( 777550 )

                If I paint a painting for you or take photos for you or similar, and I give you that painting or photo or whatever, who owns the rights to reproduce that image?
                Answer: the creator, unless and until they have signed those rights over to someone else via contract. Physical ownership does not impart rights to reproduce the creation.

                That's also how and why writers maintain rights. If you author some writing, you have copyright on that.

                One may negotiate various contracts for access to those copyrights. At the ex

                • If I paint a painting for you or take photos for you or similar, and I give you that painting or photo or whatever, who owns the rights to reproduce that image?

                  Answer: the creator, unless and until they have signed those rights over to someone else via contract. Physical ownership does not impart rights to reproduce the creation.

                  Wrong. If I hired you to do that, and you wouldn't have done it otherwise, I own all of the rights to it. Copyright law has always worked that way. No contract is needed for that.

                  However, if you create a work, and then give me a copy of it, and even give me permission to use it for a specific purpose including making copies of it, you still own all rights to it except for those you've already given away, and under whatever terms you gave them away under. Typically both parties will want a contract for that,

            • The streaming companies are making money with someone else's work, so why shouldn't these people who worked on these movies and series get paid too?

              Incorrect.
              The streaming companies are making money with their own work to build, deploy, and maintain a data-delivery service.

              I can create a blog site behind a paywall and DRM to monetize my own creative work. Do I get to go on strike and insist that Comcast, Google, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. must also pay me royalties every time their platforms are used by someone's web browser to fetch my blog content?

              • And what exactly would them deliver if it was not movies and series? By the way, a lot of movies and series pique public interest because of the actors involved. Since what is actually being sold is the actor's image, they have rights on it. This is the basis for image rights. I makes perfect sense for the likes of Julia Roberts or Johnny Depp, but the same rule applies for any actor, regardless they being more or less famous.

                • I tend to get annoyed with celebrities because they often turn out to be total douches IRL, and it does bother the viewing experience. I get annoyed with Tom Cruise movies because of the way he attacks the mental health profession for example, and I can't stop thinking of that when I see his face.

                  That side, there are a few things at play here:

                  - Content produced and owned by streaming companies
                  - Content licensed by streaming companies

                  The latter is pretty straightforward: They pay a license to the company tha

            • No - the original work in production was making the content.

              The streaming company paid all participants for that work.

              NOW the work is maintaining & storing digital copies of those works, writing and maintaining apps for all supported devices, and maintaining the infrastructure to deliver that content to subscribers on demand.

              That is ongoing - production of content is not. No one should continue to get residuals for products they've already been paid for. I'm a programmer. I've written a shit-ton of c

          • "Why have we even come to this?"

            Well sir, it is called capitalism, and it is in the late stages. The cost of survival has been so inflated and the bar to creating physical goods raised so high that rent seeking is all that is left for most people.

        • Re:Cable TV (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @12:05PM (#63897119)

          They have to raise prices since they don't have enough subscribers.

          The writer's strike has tentatively ended when the writers agreed to a 40% pay hike. Presumably the actors will want something similar. "I wonder if that could have something to do with the cost of producing shows for streaming?"

          But don't worry, the White House says there's no inflation and everything is fine. Stay the course!

          • That's the thing with all this labor negotiations and clamoring for higher minimum wages.

            Those writers got a 40% pay hike. Now Netflix raises their prices to make up for it. The plebs get upset and demand that minimum wage go up because they can't afford their streaming subscriptions anymore. The government finally relents. Starbucks, McDonalds, and all the other places now have to pay more in wages and raise their prices to make up for the difference. Now the TV show writers are upset again that their

          • The actors want to be paid for use of their likeness as if they were working. On its face that idea seems silly, but if you think about it, how else will it remain viable to be an actor?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • It never is, for public trading
    • I just want to be able to stream episodes/seasons of anything in open storefronts and pay for it as I watch. Have multiple storefronts that compete on price. More like the music industry is structured. I thought that was what streaming was supposed to be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Revek ( 133289 )
      As predicted.

    • Re:Cable TV (Score:5, Informative)

      by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @11:28AM (#63896997) Journal
      Everything is going back to the old ways. I tried to listen to a Sammy Hagar song the other day, not available on my streaming service. His anthology is on there, but they tore out all the good songs and made them unavailable. I thought, ok fine, ill just buy the track on iTunes. Nope, the only way to listen to 'The Girl Gets Around' is to buy a whole album. Its even cut out of the Footloose soundtrack. Checked every service, its the same thing. Im gonna go out later today and pick up a used CD and rip it. So fucking sick of this shit.
  • I'm almost temped to join Netflix again...JUST so I can quit again.

    • Netflix seems to be more smartly managed than Paramount, which gives you a dozen different options for signing up for free trials for Paramount+.

      If you actually paid to watch any of the new Star Trek series, you did it wrong.

    • I'm almost temped to join Netflix again...JUST so I can quit again.

      Oh the recurring joys of recurring Rage-Quit /sarcasm

  • The body of the post does not mention the actor's strike, so why is it mentioned in the title? Is there any relationship between the actor's strike and Netflix raising prices?
    • The writer's guild of America says the estimated value of the deal was $233 million per year. Obviously that money will come from subscribers, ultimately. On the other hand, Netflix claims about 75 million subscriptions in the US + Canada. So if you divide that out, it would only be an extra $3 per subscriber... per year.

    • That is obvious, the new deal with the actors (and writers) is going to cost them more, that will raise the price,

  • Never waste a crisis (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @09:56AM (#63896711)
    as usual they'll blame the workers for their mismanagement. Netflix spends orders of magnitude more on their shows than the networks relative the fame profiles of their talent.

    I'm seeing this more and more. CEOs blunder into success, something changes or they want to grow and they aren't really all that good at their jobs so they can't adapt. Then they blame us for their failures and in comes the layoffs. Which are never framed as "the CEO fucked up so we have to fire people" but always as some inevitable and natural thing that nobody could possibly do anything about.

    The C-suites are always visionaries when the market's up and blameless when it's down.

  • ... and torrents remain free! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrobinso ( 456353 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @09:58AM (#63896713) Homepage

    Netlfix raising prices. Disney+ raising prices, introducing ads. Amazon Prime raising prices, introducing ads.
    My VPN costs me $70 for 40 months and torrenting costs me nothing, with no ads to watch.
    It was easy to quit Netlfix after the last hike.
    Cutting Disney and Prime loose will be just as easy.

    With cable TV we called it cord-cutting.
    Now it's stream-cutting. That sure didn't take long.

     

  • I don't think they realize I'm only paying for the convenience of access to their content, not the content itself.

    They're already charging the limit of my impatience.

  • My internet provider put my prices up by 25% this year, can't remember if they blamed Russia or the writers' strike but there's always some excuse. Bye bye anyway. I guess I'll be doing the same with Netflix, I'm sick of companies getting away with above inflation rises, especially as Netflix hasn't had a Breaking Bad quality hit for years now
    • In this case, it's a planned reaction to the increase in cost that will accompany the raise studios will have to give to striking workers. So in this case, the cost of content is actually going up, so everyone everywhere will have to pay more for it.

  • In 1995, Robert Reich, former Sec. of Labor under Clinton, asked on the radio: why is a CEO worth ten times the salary, bonuses, etc as a company president?

    How about cutting execs salary and bonuses?

    • Management cut their own salaries? Like hell, they have the ultimate union:
      Wallstreet
      Enshitification is mandatory for any corporation in the market; eventually, it'll force them to do anything to continue to grow until they squeeze out all their customers who jump ship - unless they can rig the market to try to make their customers captive. Most that profit has to go to the shareholders; and your retirement fund could be part of the problem or is at least contributing to the demise of something you like.

  • Got an email from Disney+ yesterday, they're going from $10.99 to $12.99, so I'm going to cancel. I don't begin to watch it enough to justify it.

  • The writer's strike is an excuse. They do this literally every year, and after they started blocking users based on account sharing, it forced me to re-evaluate my account.
    I am down to zero paid streaming services, unless you count what comes free with Prime (and which I don't use anyway).

  • It couldn't be learned how much Netflix will raise prices by or when exactly the new prices will take effect.

    It couldn't be learned?

    What kind of sentence is that? What gutter gig-economy outsourcing app is WSJ using to solicit writers these days?

  • Sounds like Netflix circling the drain. They are slowly but surely pricing themselves out of the game. Couple that with the content fragmentation (Disney, Paramount, etc.) and it just looks less and less appealing to me.

    It sounds a lot like cable - fewer subscribers so hike the prices. That works for a little while, until the price gets too high and the cancellations accelerate. That's the sound I hear.

  • First, there isn't that much good on Netflix anymore or to begin with. With that said, profits are at record levels. They don't actually need to do this. They do it because they are publicly-traded and because they can. It's the corporations being lemmings and extracting more profits from the people. Inflation will continue to erode wages and savings of everyone not super rich.

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