After years of inflation, Americans are used to sticker shock. But nothing compares to the surging price of streaming video.
Last week, Apple TV+ became the latest streaming service to raise its price—up from $6.99 to $9.99 per month—following the example of Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Netflix, which all hiked their prices in October.
Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that’s double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven’t even been around for 10 years.
What the hell. Can people please cancel en masse already? Why are consumers putting up with this? The price increases stop once it’s not profitable anymore.
I guess the complexity to pirate things. Or people forgot how to.
I’ve been sailing the high seas for almost 20 years now. It’s never been easier to pirate things. Stremio and a well known service honestly beats all steaming services both in quantity and quality of the “catalogue”. At least for English language content.
I never stopped as well, but I hear young people saying stuff like “what do we do”…
In France, there was also Hadopi at some point, so people were afraid to pirate stuff, that’s how they won.
When has this ever happened?
Just to be clear, are you questioning whether there’s ever been a case where prices have been stable because a company is worried about losing customers? I mean, there are tons. We’re coming out of a 20 year period of historically low inflation. High inflation is recent, not inevitable.
Consumer electronics are an obvious example. Smart phone prices actually dropped this year on soft demand.
This generation of consumers is even dumber than the last one.
They pride themselves on getting taken for a ride because it gives them a sense of belonging.