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Netflix (NFLX) is working its way through a series of price increases in several markets, including the United States and parts of Europe. At the start of the year, for instance, Netflix reviewed its prices for US customers. The price of its most popular plan jumped 18% to $13 per month from $11 per month.
A survey from Diffusion Group came out shortly after Netflix announced the price hike and was cited by USA Today said that as many as 16% of Netflix customers could cancel their subscriptions because of the price increase. In an apparent attempt to capitalize on the expected fallout from the Netflix price hike, Hulu dropped prices for its on-demand video plans, and Dish Network (DISH) launched a discount promotion for its Sling TV service. Hulu is owned 60% by Walt Disney (DIS) and 30% by Comcast (CMCSA).
But Netflix actually added 1.7 million paying subscribers in the United States in the first quarter.
[...] That Netflix continues to add new customers even after hiking prices suggests a company with customers who are not only highly loyal but also supportive of its business strategy. Netflix has been borrowing to bankroll its expensive content budget, but it wants to rely on its customers to foot the programming bills. The company has been asking customers to pay more for the service to allow it to raise funds to spend on more content production.
https://articles.marketrealist.com/2019/04/netflix-customers-arent-only-loyal-theyre-supportive-too/
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25 2019, @04:42AM (1 child)
People haven't yet realized they have become evil, even while we point to the signs, particularly joining the RIAA now.
They are Hollywood now. And that makes them the enemy.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25 2019, @05:14PM
and if you're white and pay them you're a cuckhold as just about everything they make has anti-white propaganda in it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Whoever on Thursday April 25 2019, @05:25AM (1 child)
Netflix has never had ads.
It's not like Hulu, where you pay, and see ads, or you pay even more and you may still see ads.
Netflix has an interesting set of original content and content from around the world. What has Hulu got: repeats and the Handmaid's tale (and ads).
I am not surprised.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25 2019, @07:32AM
I think I'll cancel my subscription when they only have original content.
I see that they're getting bleach (the anime) next month. If they get more anime, I may stay longer.
But their original content? good, but not worth the increased price.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday April 25 2019, @05:58AM (6 children)
Yeah customers are still paying for Netflix.... now. Wait until all the Mouse's stuff vanishes and THEN we see. Wait until ATT/Warner spins up a streaming service and pulls their content. And so on. What I posted here years ago is fast coming to pass, the day where streaming is just as expensive as cable. Add up Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and Disney+, then drop in or two of the others because you still don't get everything with just those. Either a "streaming cable" package to get sports, news, etc. or toss in CBS All Access, HBO2Go, etc. Then add in Internet access fees. Compare to a cable bundle of Internet + TV. The difference shrinks annually from here until eventually they equalize. Because Hollywood needs to extract a certain amount from every household to keep itself in hookers and blow, they will get it from cable carriage fees or streaming, they don't care. But they WILL have it, even if they have to buy a law to force the issue.
Eventually, once everyone strips all their back catalog from them, Netflix is destined to be another premium channel like HBO. Yes they will have some compelling original content, but it will just be another channel one either subscribes to or doesn't depending on whether you happen to like the current crop of shows. There will be several other attempt to spin up, some will survive.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 25 2019, @06:22AM (1 child)
Fully agree, and I was just talking about that to someone today (cut cable, then see how much Netflix + Disney + Hulu + whatever costs). I wonder who modded you down.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday April 25 2019, @06:55AM
I did. jmorris, traitor to Netflix, traitor to SoylentNews, traitor to his dear mother. Probably tapping into the wires of his neighbor's wireless, that jmorris!
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday April 25 2019, @03:43PM (2 children)
I see the day that you visualize coming soon...
Disney is the only place to watch Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and all the old Disney classics.
HBO Go will be expanded for other Time Warner content that will be removed from netflix and others.
CBS All Access is already the only place to watch Star Trek Discovery legally.
The problem is that few people will be able to afford getting them all. Many people drop cable and go to over the air combined with streaming because of the price (and the fact that cable monopolies are universally hated.) By the time it is all done, you will end up paying more for streaming everything than you will for cable. I do not see everyone having their own walled off system being economically viable... either for the consumers who can't afford it, or the production houses that want to remove their content from competing systems.
Once everyone has their multitude of competing production companies with their own separate streaming systems, I expect a day of reckoning to occur when they do not get nearly the amount of subscribers that they want. I only hope for the consumer, that this is sooner rather than later.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 25 2019, @05:12PM (1 child)
Damn, how will I ever survive without Xmen 27, Star Wars 52 and the 13'th reboot of every movie Disney has ever made?!?!?!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 26 2019, @01:04AM
You'll turn to piracy. It's like digital heroin.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Thursday April 25 2019, @05:37PM
Then if you actually want sports packages, it's $135 a year for MLB and more than that for NHL. But wait... those get blacked out, so you also need to stream Comcast and/or Disney properties to see those games.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday April 25 2019, @02:02PM (3 children)
Nothing much else but that. $2 per month, even if it is 18% isn't much of a loyalty test for the majority of their subscribers. And the story acknowledges that Netflix did lose an unspecified amount of customers over the hikes even if they had net customer gain overall. So the headline doesn't really represent the story. "Loyalty" isn't exactly the word to use in this situation IMVHO. But "dedicated" doesn't sell quite as well even if it is more accurate.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by iamjacksusername on Thursday April 25 2019, @02:24PM (2 children)
It is not a huge amount but it is a good test of the elasticity of Netflix's demand. To put this in terms of a car example, gas prices are notoriously inelastic within certain bands: the price of gas fluctuating within those bands is not going to substantially affect their gas consumption. They still have to go to work, grocery store, etc... I.e., most people are not going to make structural changes to their life to change their gas consumption unless gas prices move out of those bands. The real-world exmaple of this was in the mid-2000s in the US when gas prices (at the pump) went up from the low $1/gallon range to $3-$4/gallon. Economists noted there was a 3% drop in consumption that they believed to be permanent - people who had made structural changes to their life to lower their consumption. This could be anything from moving closer to a job to getting rid of a vehicle as unnecessary.
For Netflix, they have found that demand for their service is inelastic when the price is increased by $2 increase. They want to move out of the 'commodity streaming market' and become something like HBO+other stuff as nobody wants to be a commodity. I would expect another price increase next year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @12:53PM (1 child)
But was it permanent? I mean, it's more than a decade ago, so the data should be in by now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @07:42PM
On those timescales, yes. SUV and truck sales dropped, which I think you can classify as permanent when you're talking about timescales of like a decade. However, when the US got big on fracking and became the largest oil producer and gas prices fell, SUVs and big trucks are now back in fashion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25 2019, @05:33PM
Netflix Customers aren't only slaves, they're sycophantic too!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Friday April 26 2019, @12:20AM
but there isn't that much keeping me there. Their catalog and content has been shrinking for years.
Primarily the shrinking streaming aggregator phenomena is due to the marriage of content creation and distribution.
If we are going to grant you an artificial monopoly on something, there should be public good constraints, such as NO YOU MAY NOT BE A (SOLE) DISTRIBUTOR ALSO.
This is the same thing as with movie studios owning movie theaters. Studios were going through a similar phase and owned the distribution (theaters) also with strikingly similar anti-consumer results. They were eventually forced (U.S. vs. Paramount [wikipedia.org]) in 1948 to divest themselves of their theaters under the Sherman Anti-Trust act. The same thing needs to happen again.
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