It seems as if almost all major streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney Hotstar, and others raise their subscription prices every other month. What began as cost-effective ways to watch your favorite shows, ditching the cable services, has now crept up in their prices even more than that of cable bills. Why is that so? Why are streaming services becoming more and more pricey?
The answer is right here. Streaming services require more and more original content to be displayed on their platform, as the audience’s demand to watch their favorite shows is increasing rapidly. This pressurizes the streaming services to get the most demanded channels, benefiting the media companies, which forces them to license more and more content. They eventually increasing their subscription fees to cover up the costs of the license buying.
While Netflix is the latest service to increase its subscription fees since January 2022, YouTube is also making rounds in the news to raise its monthly prices. What is the reason behind this corporate greed? Let us find out.
Bigger Bundles With Bigger Subscription Fee
By adding channels like CNN, TBS, TNT, etc., YouTube TV raised its monthly prices to $40 in 2018. Just after a year, the service became more expensive by raising its price to $50 per month, with the addition of The Discovery Channel. Then, again in 2020, YouTube changed the cost to a whopping $65 by adding Viacom Channels.
The service started with only 40 channels and rose its prices in three consecutive years because it ballooned to 80 more channels. Most of these bundled channels are not even regularly watched, thus accounting for why streaming services become more and more expensive. The subscribers are bound to pay for bundles that do not even matter to them.
Media Companies Calling The Shots
It is quite understandable why people get upset when streaming services raise their prices. However, it is not fair with the services as well. Unfortunately, like all viewers, streaming services are essentially at the mercy of media companies owning the channels.
Most people prefer to pay for a single channel that is their favorite, but that is not the case with the media companies. For example, if you only watch ESPN, you would not get it alone. ESPN is owned by Disney, and the company will sell the channel with other media in a bundle, giving the streaming services no pull to disagree. They are also bound to buy to overcome the increasing demand of showing more and more content on their platform, thus covering the costs by increasing the subscription fee.
To know about the best streaming service bundle and how to save money, watch this short video:
Will It Get Better?
We know that it is a crappy situation for all of us; it sounds pretty grim for all except the media companies. Is there any way to make this better? We are afraid to say no. The media companies are to blame for the skyrocketing prices of streaming services, with no incentives to fix this. Therefore, the moral of the story is that when the demand for more content increases, the streaming services become more expensive. With almost no room to fix this, we all are bound to choose between paying for more than we actually want or just living without it!
