What The Tech : Streaming Price Increase

CHARLOTTE , N.C. – The new year ushers in more price increases for streaming video. Streaming services across the board have increased prices in the past few years giving some recent cord-cutters less of a savings than they expected.

For example, YouTube TV was $35 a month six years ago but is double that cost today. The latest price hike is for Amazon Prime Video unless you watch commercials.

Amazon has notified subscribers of a price hike of $3 a month on top of the $ 139-a-year Amazon Prime membership. The increase goes into effect on January 29th. Subscribers who don’t want to pay the extra charge will have to watch commercials before and during movies and
shows. Amazon says there will be fewer commercial breaks than regular TV and other streaming services.

The change isn’t too much of a surprise as Amazon already charges Prime subscribers an extra fee for ad-free Amazon Music.

Amazon is the latest in a string of services hiking prices. Max will soon charge an extra dollar a month for ad-free programming. Netflix stopped offering its cheapest ad-free plan and began promoting its ad-supported plan for $7 a month. Disney raised prices for commercial free subscribers by $3 a month.

If you subscribe to them all, you’ll pay an extra $50 or so a year or watch commercials. Cord cutters are also paying a great deal more than they did a few years ago for live TV. The most popular streaming service, YouTube TV raised the price of its cheapest plan by $8 a
month.  Hulu with Live TV costs $7 more a month than it did this time last year. The ad-free version is now $90 a month.