If there is one sad truth regarding streaming services, it is that the price of a subscription increases regularly. This time, it is Disney again. Just a year and a couple of days after the last price increase in the United States, Disney is once again increasing the price of Disney+ Premium and Hulu Premium subscriptions, report various news outlets, including Variety.
Existing and new subscribers will have to pay $21.49 per month now for the Disney+ and Hulu premium plans. That’s an increase of $2.50 per month from the current price of $18.99 per month for the plans without ads.
The bundle, which includes Disney+ and Hulu Premium, is also going up to $21.99 per month. Interestingly, that is just $0.50 more than each of the two streaming plans cost individually.
Non-premium customers get price hikes as well. Ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu plans go up to $12.49 per month (from $11.99) while the Disney+ and Hulu bundle with ads remains at $12.99 for now.
New customers will need to pay the higher price immediately while existing customers will see the price increase on their next monthly bill.
To put this into perspective: Disney increased the price of its Disney+ offering each year for the past three years, which bumped the price from $13.99 in 2024 to now $21.49. For Hulu, Disney increased the price in the last four years three times. From $13.99 in 2023 to now $21.49,
Netflix pricing has also increased three times in the past four years. From $19.99 for its premium offering to now $26.99.
It does not take a prophet to predict that the next price hikes are just around the corner, likely next year already.
The only defense that users of these services have is to cancel their subscriptions. You could still subscribe for a month or two each year, if that option remains available to watch all the content of the past 12 months.
I for one do not have any streaming media subscription and have no intention of subscribing to any of the services. Saves a lot of money and I don’t miss out on that many good shows or movies anyway.
$26.99–that’s some serious money in this household considering the price of a decent fiber connection, almost an essential, is $70.00/month and each phone on GoogleFi is $25.00, all of which are almost essential, basic utilities for the modern age.
What I find amusing are the number of households that stream movies throughout the day, but no one is watching. Or asking someone who recently streamed a movie what the theme of the movie/series was, not what it was “about”; what was the universal idea, lesson, message explored that revealed the unique meaning of life events and relationships–and they can’t say because of the habit of passively watching movies/series.
As I was going through some old blog posts, I suddenly realized why I rarely watch any moves/series anymore: content. Content has become vacant, vacuous, predictable, junk-food for the mind–sex, profanity, gratuitous violence. Very few Philipp Vossberg/Beat solioquys anymore.
Quite disturbing–the decay of culture? I noted a number of scenes from movies/shows I had watched and “clipped,” much like one highlights thematic passages in a novel, were fewer and fewer as the years went by. Even the mention of a movie/series became non-existent.
They are pushing people to piracy, while destroying franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, and super hero’s with bad writing and the need to follow many shows to know what is going on.
They destroy your childhood memories of fictional characters you admired.
They are still pushing too much unneeded violence, gore and sex, alcohol abuse as fun, etc, making it not a good idea to let kids watch them.
So let them keep their junk.
You can not get back your precious wasted time. I spend my time watching good educational science, math and documentaries videos on YouTube. Time well spent.
No surprises really.
Piracy is still the most viable option and remains the undisputed king.
The truth is that corporate greed is the biggest hurdle to providing a truly viable service.
Is it really piracy when AI (and I am not going to call it SI or whatever they want to call it) is constantly violating copyright and privacy with impunity.
As far as I am concerned you do what you want and choose what is viable for you. Clearly everybody else is.
Also welcome back Martin.