14 ms·

Disney Plus to Raise Prices by $3 a Month as It Launches Tier with Ads

35 points by frumper 4y ago

EricE 4y ago
Maybe if Disney produced content people wanted to watch instead of letting the insane leverage their platform to elevate their voice, more people might be interested in subscribing. Discovery, post merger, seems to be interesting in refocusing Warner back on creating quality content that people actually are interested in - what a concept!
- dawnerd 4y ago
  What? Disney+ surpassed Netflix in subscribers. https://www.axios.com/2022/08/10/disney-surpasses-netflix-global-paid-subscribers https://www.axios.com/2022/08/10/disney-surpasses-netflix-gl...
  - kerbs 4y ago
    Yeah that was a weird comment. Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. It's absolutely dizzying to think how fast they are going to blow past Netflix with Disney+ alone. It must be stressful to be in leadership at Netflix right now. How do you compete? More Chaos Monkeys? It's clear the differentiator is no longer engineering but IP.
    - toyg 4y ago
      > It's clear the differentiator is no longer engineering but IP. That's been obvious for a very long time. It's why stuff like Stranger Things exists and is being milked. NF leadership have been playing that game for a long time now, they knew the time of reckoning would come; the question is whether they managed to build enough defences to resist the predicted storm and stay afloat in the long term.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      > Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. It's absolutely dizzying to think how fast they are going to blow past Netflix with Disney+ alone. Well. No surprise given how much buy-ups and mergers the regulators tolerated... Out of the list for popular franchises, Disney owns the top two (MCU/26 B$, Star Wars/10 B$) and has significant involvement in the third place (Spider-Man). Additionally, they own Avatar (which is the most profitable movie ever made), The Simpsons, Indiana Jones, the entire catalog of Pixar, the entire classic and re-made OG Disney IP and a ton of other stuff [1]. Of the really popular stuff, the only things Disney doesn't own are Harry Potter (which is a complicated dumpster fire not just given the tendency of JKR to set her own life work ablaze, but also IP-rights-wise [2]), the DC Universe (which hasn't managed to stay even close to competitive with MCU), Star Trek (which went off Netflix to Paramount+) and James Bond. The future of entertainment is scary - Disney needs to be broken up, or the government needs to step in and mandate that copyright holders have to provide fair and equal streaming rights to everyone, similar to the music industry (which managed to get the hint on its own, and now there's more than healthy competition in the market with OG Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and a boatload of smaller ones). [1] https://ifilmthings.com/disney-owns/ https://ifilmthings.com/disney-owns/ [2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22770469/harry-potter-streaming-hbo-max-peacock-abc-family-freeform-rights https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22770469/harry-potter-st...
      - kerbs 4y ago
        Yeah I'm ambivalent about if what they do is good. I do think that what they've done with Star Wars is better than whatever Lucasfilm did with the franchise between 1983 and when they sold. Should new Star Wars be a big part of what I watch? I enjoy them, but I'm undecided. MCU just feels like rubbish, but it prints money for reasons I just can't figure out.
        mschuster91 4y ago
        Going to disagree on Star Wars. The prequels at least had a somewhat coherent story line (aside from the great Darth Jar Jar conspiracy) and artistic direction, the new sequels are... just WTF? It's still blowing my mind what went wrong there. It seems like they didn't have any sort of plan beforehand and just went with whatever they came up with, completely ditching decades of Expanded Universe lore. In contrast, the MCU is the perfect execution of "how to make a movie out of a boatload of source material". IMHO, them sticking to the lore well enough that the die-hard nerds don't have much to whine was the key decision that made the MCU what it is... but now that the MCU has gotten so absurdly large, it's going to be interesting if they can keep up with that attention to detail.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      > Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. Disney+ sure, but Disney is the Goliath in entertainment and has been around for close to 100 years!
  - dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
    Not to say Disney+ is not successful, but the headline is false as discussed previously here.
  - chomp 4y ago
    Disney+ did not surpass Netflix, go look at the earnings report. All Disney properties (Hulu, ESPN+, Disney+) lumped together surpassed Netflix. And some of those subs are potentially double and triple counted because of that.
    - stiltzkin 4y ago
      Also Disney was aggressive with good pricing and package with ESPN+, it was known from the beginning the price would change.
    - darth_avocado 4y ago
      Not sure if they included global numbers but for example, in India they have hotstar as a property which shows live sports and is huge, which bundles up with Disney+.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        Global numbers. > in India they have hotstar as a property which shows live sports and is huge On the other hand, Disney did lose the rights to stream Indian Premier League https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-wins-tv-rights-loses-streaming-rights-for-indian-premier-league-cricket-11655223683 https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-wins-tv-rights-loses-str...
  - neogodless 4y ago
    You have to word this carefully... Disney has more subscriptions than Netflix, when you add together the streaming services they offer. ("Subscribers" implies people, but that's much harder to count accurately.)
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > What? Disney+ surpassed Netflix in subscribers. False. Disney+, Hulu, Hotstar, and ESPN combined.
  - drewg123 4y ago
    I signed up for the Disney bundle recently, mostly because it was free with my Amex card. So I'm counted as 3 subscribers (even though I've never bothered to sign into ESPN+), and I provide $0 revenue to Disney. I think the lesson is that it is easy to have great growth numbers when you give your service away, loose billions, and triple count subscribers.
- optimalsolver 4y ago
  So the people who took Discovery from science-focused educational programming to truckers and pawn stars are calling the shots? That doesn't sound good to me, but obviously they know what the people want.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/4/23291037/hbo-max-warner-bros-discovery-merger-david-zaslav-chip-joanna-gaines https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/4/23291037/hbo-max-warner-br... I fear that all of HBO's good scripted content will get axed in favor of cheap to produce reality crap.
- rideontime 4y ago
  > letting the insane leverage their platform to elevate their voice Can you expand on this?
  - mminer237 4y ago
    One notable recent thing that stood out to me is that the kids' show Baymax! had an episode where the plot was that a 12-year-old girl needed help shopping for menstrual hygiene products and got recommendations on what was most comfortable from a transgender man. Which is likely to be very confusing for most kids to say the least and was clearly added to score political points, not to make a better show.
    - libraryatnight 4y ago
      I had to go look up the scene, and it was Baymax asking for opinions and getting a bunch of opinions from everyone in the shopping isle including one from a man who says he always gets the ones with wings. That seemed to be it?
    - rideontime 4y ago
      Aha. So that's what GP was referring to as "insane"? Thanks for being explicit about it at least.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 32bitkid 4y ago
  Legit question: who, exactly, classifies as “the insane” in this statement?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - TaupeRanger 4y ago
    I'm guessing they mean people who think transexuals should be treated with respect, included in society, and represented in media.
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  They have an estimated 137M subscribers and year over year growth, I'm sure they'll look into your suggestion though.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Arrr!
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  It's morally right to pirate Disney properties.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    It's morally neutral, at best. I suppose watching a pirated Disney property doesn't deprive Disney of anything, since someone anti-Disney+ otherwise wouldn't have watched it on Disney+ anyway.
criddell 4y ago
They should say "tier with more ads" because I'm pretty sure they already have embedded ads in the form of product placement and other paid content.
- linuxdaemon 4y ago
  Just like on the Disney channel they don't have ads, they have programs "brought to you by our proud sponsor"
- libraryatnight 4y ago
  This is something that makes me laugh at SeriusXM - tons of commercials that let you know there's no commercials and then advertise their other stations and apps.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  An ad interrupts your viewing of a show by forcing you to watch something else. Product placement does not, even if it could be distracting.
  - tomjen3 4y ago
    I was watching Netflix Swiss familiy Robinson-in-space thing, and they had like a giant product placement showing of how big the package of Oreos they had brought with them was. It was both distracting, annoyning and an ad in all but name. You would still call it an ad if the characters in the show also acted in the commercial, right?
hef19898 4y ago
Amazon did something similar with Freeve (or whatever it is called). So today streaming services have specific days they air their blockbuster series episodes (same as traditional TV) and now we get ads (same as traditional TV). Both, I assume, to remain profitable. So how exactly did streaming disrupt traditional contebt broadcasting again?
- frumper 4y ago
  At least you can still pay more to not be interrupted by ads on Disney+. Anything on Freeve is frustrating to watch with no way that I know of to pay to go ad free. If someone knows if you can, please comment.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    maybe ask kind people at sponsorblock to start supporting that website as well?
ChildOfChaos 4y ago
Quite a big increase, pure money grabbing move, since they launched the ad service at the same price as the current service. Sure they assume this is basically free money, anyone that doesn't want to pay extra just has to put up the adverts, anyone that doesn't can pay extra. The board likely love this idea.
- toyg 4y ago
  > pure money grabbing move Disney is a giant corporation, "grabbing" money is why they exist.
- lancesells 4y ago
  It's $3 more a month. We can all talk about percentages but it's $3/mo or $36/year and not a big increase. I get feeling like it's a bait and switch but it's not a lot of money and not outrageous. I'm not a Disney+ subscriber or even a fan of voluntary subscriptions but we should all be more outraged by food and housing prices than the cost of entertainment.
  - Clent 4y ago
    Are you too young to have experienced cable pricing? The increase is more than inflation, which is already high. This will not be the last increase. I predict bi-yearly increases that keep the pricing well ahead of inflation.
    - lancesells 4y ago
      I'm very old and know all about cable pricing. Not sure what that has to do with my comment though. That said, I haven't had cable in ~18 years so maybe I'm missing the correlation. It won't be the last price increase and it's nothing to do with inflation no matter what they say or indicate. I agree you'll see bi-yearly increases from every streaming service since they will all follow each other's lead. In 10 years Disney+ will most likely be twice the price it is today. They will raise prices until people stop paying which I suspect won't be happening for a very long time if ever.
  - 4y ago
999900000999 4y ago
I'm tempted to hack out a website real quick, you'll search for a show and it'll tell you when the next season's coming and on which service. And then you can schedule your entire year around which individual months you want to be subscribed to say Netflix or Hulu. Maybe call it Go binge me
- mushufasa 4y ago
  linke this? https://www.canistream.it https://www.canistream.it
- cplantijn 4y ago
  Sounds fantastic but is that information even publicly available? Sometimes new seasons of shows drop with little notice, if any.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  I thought Netflix sends you an email if a new season of a show you enjoy comes out.
  - neogodless 4y ago
    Wow, even for Hulu and Disney+ and Paramount and HBO Max? That is quite kind and unexpected.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      Ouch.
      - neogodless 4y ago
        Sorry - sarcasm isn't the best spirit of Hacker News curiosity. I should've found a kinder way to indicate that the grandparent comment was about all services, not specific to Netflix.
- lopis 4y ago
Someone1234 4y ago
That $3 represents a 37.5% increase. From $8 to $11. This, yet again, showcases to the people claiming the "ad experience is optional" are ignoring the fact that the new "normal" price will be the ad experience, and that ad-less will be a premium tier priced accordingly. We've seen it numerous times, but yet people still repeat the same tired defense. It is highly unlikely Disney will extract the full $3 from ad revenue, therefore this is just a price discrimination strategy disguised as the illusion of choice.
- behringer 4y ago
  I don't really see the problem. A company's allowed to charge whatever they want for access and prices will always go up. I think it's good the companies are even giving us a choice about ads.
  - dijit 4y ago
    They can do what they like, legally- perhaps even morally. We can be mad about it; because they make the deal we signed up to materially worse and invalidate all previous arguments to their defense historically. "Disney+ costs a lot, but at least theres no ads" now: "Disney+ can be cheaper with ads!" (dismissing the fact that it's the same price and still more expensive than alternatives that existed without ads)
  - Someone1234 4y ago
    > I think it's good the companies are even giving us a choice about ads. That's the problem. Companies can do a thing, then people can criticize them for it. An almost 40% price increase is worthy of criticism. People jump to defend it with "but you get a choice!" While ignoring that your choice is either: Pay the massive price hike OR get a substantially worse user experience. That's a pretty terrible "choice," and that too is deserving of critique. Jumping to defend companies treating people this way is exactly WHY companies feel they can treat people this way. It is a destructive cycle. Soon we'll have micro-transactions in streaming and people will jump to defend the "choice" of that too.
    - 4y ago
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
They're not "launching" a tier with ads. They're adding ads to the current subscription and raising the price for those who don't want ads. Edit: Or said a different way - they're adding ads to the current subscription and "launching" a higher tier with no ads.
darth_avocado 4y ago
So I’ll get only Disney+ for the price of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. I cancelled Hulu and ESPN. I guess I’ll add Disney+ to the list.
teeray 4y ago
Slowly and inexorably, we’re rebuilding cable TV on top of streaming. The difference is that we finally get the a la carte plan we consumers have always wanted.

35 points by frumper 4y ago

Maybe if Disney produced content people wanted to watch instead of letting the insane leverage their platform to elevate their voice, more people might be interested in subscribing. Discovery, post merger, seems to be interesting in refocusing Warner back on creating quality content that people actually are interested in - what a concept!

dawnerd 4y ago
What? Disney+ surpassed Netflix in subscribers. https://www.axios.com/2022/08/10/disney-surpasses-netflix-global-paid-subscribers https://www.axios.com/2022/08/10/disney-surpasses-netflix-gl...
- kerbs 4y ago
  Yeah that was a weird comment. Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. It's absolutely dizzying to think how fast they are going to blow past Netflix with Disney+ alone. It must be stressful to be in leadership at Netflix right now. How do you compete? More Chaos Monkeys? It's clear the differentiator is no longer engineering but IP.
  - toyg 4y ago
    > It's clear the differentiator is no longer engineering but IP. That's been obvious for a very long time. It's why stuff like Stranger Things exists and is being milked. NF leadership have been playing that game for a long time now, they knew the time of reckoning would come; the question is whether they managed to build enough defences to resist the predicted storm and stay afloat in the long term.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. It's absolutely dizzying to think how fast they are going to blow past Netflix with Disney+ alone. Well. No surprise given how much buy-ups and mergers the regulators tolerated... Out of the list for popular franchises, Disney owns the top two (MCU/26 B$, Star Wars/10 B$) and has significant involvement in the third place (Spider-Man). Additionally, they own Avatar (which is the most profitable movie ever made), The Simpsons, Indiana Jones, the entire catalog of Pixar, the entire classic and re-made OG Disney IP and a ton of other stuff [1]. Of the really popular stuff, the only things Disney doesn't own are Harry Potter (which is a complicated dumpster fire not just given the tendency of JKR to set her own life work ablaze, but also IP-rights-wise [2]), the DC Universe (which hasn't managed to stay even close to competitive with MCU), Star Trek (which went off Netflix to Paramount+) and James Bond. The future of entertainment is scary - Disney needs to be broken up, or the government needs to step in and mandate that copyright holders have to provide fair and equal streaming rights to everyone, similar to the music industry (which managed to get the hint on its own, and now there's more than healthy competition in the market with OG Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and a boatload of smaller ones). [1] https://ifilmthings.com/disney-owns/ https://ifilmthings.com/disney-owns/ [2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22770469/harry-potter-streaming-hbo-max-peacock-abc-family-freeform-rights https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22770469/harry-potter-st...
    - kerbs 4y ago
      Yeah I'm ambivalent about if what they do is good. I do think that what they've done with Star Wars is better than whatever Lucasfilm did with the franchise between 1983 and when they sold. Should new Star Wars be a big part of what I watch? I enjoy them, but I'm undecided. MCU just feels like rubbish, but it prints money for reasons I just can't figure out.
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        Going to disagree on Star Wars. The prequels at least had a somewhat coherent story line (aside from the great Darth Jar Jar conspiracy) and artistic direction, the new sequels are... just WTF? It's still blowing my mind what went wrong there. It seems like they didn't have any sort of plan beforehand and just went with whatever they came up with, completely ditching decades of Expanded Universe lore. In contrast, the MCU is the perfect execution of "how to make a movie out of a boatload of source material". IMHO, them sticking to the lore well enough that the die-hard nerds don't have much to whine was the key decision that made the MCU what it is... but now that the MCU has gotten so absurdly large, it's going to be interesting if they can keep up with that attention to detail.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > Disney+ is huge, and it got there so fast. Disney+ sure, but Disney is the Goliath in entertainment and has been around for close to 100 years!
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  Not to say Disney+ is not successful, but the headline is false as discussed previously here.
- chomp 4y ago
  Disney+ did not surpass Netflix, go look at the earnings report. All Disney properties (Hulu, ESPN+, Disney+) lumped together surpassed Netflix. And some of those subs are potentially double and triple counted because of that.
  - stiltzkin 4y ago
    Also Disney was aggressive with good pricing and package with ESPN+, it was known from the beginning the price would change.
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    Not sure if they included global numbers but for example, in India they have hotstar as a property which shows live sports and is huge, which bundles up with Disney+.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      Global numbers. > in India they have hotstar as a property which shows live sports and is huge On the other hand, Disney did lose the rights to stream Indian Premier League https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-wins-tv-rights-loses-streaming-rights-for-indian-premier-league-cricket-11655223683 https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-wins-tv-rights-loses-str...
- neogodless 4y ago
  You have to word this carefully... Disney has more subscriptions than Netflix, when you add together the streaming services they offer. ("Subscribers" implies people, but that's much harder to count accurately.)
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > What? Disney+ surpassed Netflix in subscribers. False. Disney+, Hulu, Hotstar, and ESPN combined.
- drewg123 4y ago
  I signed up for the Disney bundle recently, mostly because it was free with my Amex card. So I'm counted as 3 subscribers (even though I've never bothered to sign into ESPN+), and I provide $0 revenue to Disney. I think the lesson is that it is easy to have great growth numbers when you give your service away, loose billions, and triple count subscribers.
optimalsolver 4y ago
So the people who took Discovery from science-focused educational programming to truckers and pawn stars are calling the shots? That doesn't sound good to me, but obviously they know what the people want.
- Arrath 4y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/4/23291037/hbo-max-warner-bros-discovery-merger-david-zaslav-chip-joanna-gaines https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/4/23291037/hbo-max-warner-br... I fear that all of HBO's good scripted content will get axed in favor of cheap to produce reality crap.
rideontime 4y ago
> letting the insane leverage their platform to elevate their voice Can you expand on this?
- mminer237 4y ago
  One notable recent thing that stood out to me is that the kids' show Baymax! had an episode where the plot was that a 12-year-old girl needed help shopping for menstrual hygiene products and got recommendations on what was most comfortable from a transgender man. Which is likely to be very confusing for most kids to say the least and was clearly added to score political points, not to make a better show.
  - libraryatnight 4y ago
    I had to go look up the scene, and it was Baymax asking for opinions and getting a bunch of opinions from everyone in the shopping isle including one from a man who says he always gets the ones with wings. That seemed to be it?
  - rideontime 4y ago
    Aha. So that's what GP was referring to as "insane"? Thanks for being explicit about it at least.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
32bitkid 4y ago
Legit question: who, exactly, classifies as “the insane” in this statement?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  I'm guessing they mean people who think transexuals should be treated with respect, included in society, and represented in media.
bastardoperator 4y ago
They have an estimated 137M subscribers and year over year growth, I'm sure they'll look into your suggestion though.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Arrr!

emptyparadise 4y ago
It's morally right to pirate Disney properties.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  It's morally neutral, at best. I suppose watching a pirated Disney property doesn't deprive Disney of anything, since someone anti-Disney+ otherwise wouldn't have watched it on Disney+ anyway.

criddell 4y ago

They should say "tier with more ads" because I'm pretty sure they already have embedded ads in the form of product placement and other paid content.

linuxdaemon 4y ago
Just like on the Disney channel they don't have ads, they have programs "brought to you by our proud sponsor"
libraryatnight 4y ago
This is something that makes me laugh at SeriusXM - tons of commercials that let you know there's no commercials and then advertise their other stations and apps.
andsoitis 4y ago
An ad interrupts your viewing of a show by forcing you to watch something else. Product placement does not, even if it could be distracting.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  I was watching Netflix Swiss familiy Robinson-in-space thing, and they had like a giant product placement showing of how big the package of Oreos they had brought with them was. It was both distracting, annoyning and an ad in all but name. You would still call it an ad if the characters in the show also acted in the commercial, right?

hef19898 4y ago

Amazon did something similar with Freeve (or whatever it is called). So today streaming services have specific days they air their blockbuster series episodes (same as traditional TV) and now we get ads (same as traditional TV). Both, I assume, to remain profitable. So how exactly did streaming disrupt traditional contebt broadcasting again?

frumper 4y ago
At least you can still pay more to not be interrupted by ads on Disney+. Anything on Freeve is frustrating to watch with no way that I know of to pay to go ad free. If someone knows if you can, please comment.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  maybe ask kind people at sponsorblock to start supporting that website as well?

ChildOfChaos 4y ago

Quite a big increase, pure money grabbing move, since they launched the ad service at the same price as the current service. Sure they assume this is basically free money, anyone that doesn't want to pay extra just has to put up the adverts, anyone that doesn't can pay extra. The board likely love this idea.

toyg 4y ago
> pure money grabbing move Disney is a giant corporation, "grabbing" money is why they exist.
lancesells 4y ago
It's $3 more a month. We can all talk about percentages but it's $3/mo or $36/year and not a big increase. I get feeling like it's a bait and switch but it's not a lot of money and not outrageous. I'm not a Disney+ subscriber or even a fan of voluntary subscriptions but we should all be more outraged by food and housing prices than the cost of entertainment.
- Clent 4y ago
  Are you too young to have experienced cable pricing? The increase is more than inflation, which is already high. This will not be the last increase. I predict bi-yearly increases that keep the pricing well ahead of inflation.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    I'm very old and know all about cable pricing. Not sure what that has to do with my comment though. That said, I haven't had cable in ~18 years so maybe I'm missing the correlation. It won't be the last price increase and it's nothing to do with inflation no matter what they say or indicate. I agree you'll see bi-yearly increases from every streaming service since they will all follow each other's lead. In 10 years Disney+ will most likely be twice the price it is today. They will raise prices until people stop paying which I suspect won't be happening for a very long time if ever.
- 4y ago

999900000999 4y ago

I'm tempted to hack out a website real quick, you'll search for a show and it'll tell you when the next season's coming and on which service. And then you can schedule your entire year around which individual months you want to be subscribed to say Netflix or Hulu. Maybe call it Go binge me

mushufasa 4y ago
linke this? https://www.canistream.it https://www.canistream.it
cplantijn 4y ago
Sounds fantastic but is that information even publicly available? Sometimes new seasons of shows drop with little notice, if any.
andsoitis 4y ago
I thought Netflix sends you an email if a new season of a show you enjoy comes out.
- neogodless 4y ago
  Wow, even for Hulu and Disney+ and Paramount and HBO Max? That is quite kind and unexpected.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Ouch.
    - neogodless 4y ago
      Sorry - sarcasm isn't the best spirit of Hacker News curiosity. I should've found a kinder way to indicate that the grandparent comment was about all services, not specific to Netflix.
lopis 4y ago

Someone1234 4y ago

That $3 represents a 37.5% increase. From $8 to $11. This, yet again, showcases to the people claiming the "ad experience is optional" are ignoring the fact that the new "normal" price will be the ad experience, and that ad-less will be a premium tier priced accordingly. We've seen it numerous times, but yet people still repeat the same tired defense. It is highly unlikely Disney will extract the full $3 from ad revenue, therefore this is just a price discrimination strategy disguised as the illusion of choice.

behringer 4y ago
I don't really see the problem. A company's allowed to charge whatever they want for access and prices will always go up. I think it's good the companies are even giving us a choice about ads.
- dijit 4y ago
  They can do what they like, legally- perhaps even morally. We can be mad about it; because they make the deal we signed up to materially worse and invalidate all previous arguments to their defense historically. "Disney+ costs a lot, but at least theres no ads" now: "Disney+ can be cheaper with ads!" (dismissing the fact that it's the same price and still more expensive than alternatives that existed without ads)
- Someone1234 4y ago
  > I think it's good the companies are even giving us a choice about ads. That's the problem. Companies can do a thing, then people can criticize them for it. An almost 40% price increase is worthy of criticism. People jump to defend it with "but you get a choice!" While ignoring that your choice is either: Pay the massive price hike OR get a substantially worse user experience. That's a pretty terrible "choice," and that too is deserving of critique. Jumping to defend companies treating people this way is exactly WHY companies feel they can treat people this way. It is a destructive cycle. Soon we'll have micro-transactions in streaming and people will jump to defend the "choice" of that too.
  - 4y ago

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

They're not "launching" a tier with ads. They're adding ads to the current subscription and raising the price for those who don't want ads. Edit: Or said a different way - they're adding ads to the current subscription and "launching" a higher tier with no ads.

darth_avocado 4y ago

So I’ll get only Disney+ for the price of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. I cancelled Hulu and ESPN. I guess I’ll add Disney+ to the list.

teeray 4y ago

Slowly and inexorably, we’re rebuilding cable TV on top of streaming. The difference is that we finally get the a la carte plan we consumers have always wanted.