6 ms·

Disney+ loses 700k subscribers following price increase

75 points by mgh2 2y ago

gjsman-1000 2y ago
I remember when ad-free was $7/mo. All good things come to an end. Here we are, 6 years later, with 128% markup. We’re also at the level where you need to watch more than 4 Disney movies per week (edit: month, typo) to justify not renting. For some families this is easy - for my childhood, where we had one “movie night” per week, this would have been a tough sell.
- jjice 2y ago
  4 per week? I see the ad-free price now is $16. 4 per week would be 16 per month. Most rentals I've seen (through something like Amazon) run $4. Am I missing a cheaper rental service that runs about $1 per film?
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    While they still existed, yes: video stores. Catalog movies (that is, not new releases) could often be had for $1 a night. Most were run out of business due to streaming, but if you have one nearby, it’s almost certainly cheaper and better quality than streaming. Plus you’d be supporting a local business in the process.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    Am I missing a cheaper rental service that runs about $1 per film? Your local public library? In some cities, they're really well stocked when it comes to video. And many have video streaming services, or sometimes even "community" subscriptions to Netflix or whatever that you can check out for a week at a time. Your tax dollars at work.
  - stevekemp 2y ago
    > Am I missing a cheaper rental service that runs about $1 per film? Honestly where I am I can buy used DVDs for €1 each. I actually went out and bought a DVD player to connect to my TV a year or so ago, because the price was just so compelling. One benefit to physical DVDs are that they can't disappear like a streaming-service can, you paid for it and you get to own it "forever". DVDs often have subtitles, which is nice for language-learners like me. (I used to stream content from my PC, via VLC, to a chromecase, but subtitles were never streamed. That was annoying, but not a huge deal.) It might not apply to all, and local shops are very expensive for "new" releases, but if you have a lot of used stores DVDs are essentially free for both TV series and films.
- mcphage 2y ago
  > you need to watch more than 4 Disney movies per week to justify not renting How so? At $16/month, that's 1 $4 rental per week. Or are you getting $1 rentals somewhere?
  - rdsnsca 2y ago
    DVD"s sell at flea markets / yard sales for $1 doller each here.
burkaman 2y ago
A decrease of about 0.6% of the subscriber base after a much larger than 0.6% price increase, so I'm guessing they consider this a success.
- itishappy 2y ago
  "Disney+ gains $480 in revenue following price increase"
  - jve 2y ago
    Less users means less operational cost I guess.
    - paxys 2y ago
      Change in operating costs are probably a rounding error either way, considering the vast majority of expenses are content production and engineer salaries, and those are fixed.
- bachmeier 2y ago
  > I'm guessing they consider this a success. I'm sure they do. Of course that doesn't count the number of new subscribers they would have had, but didn't get. Or the number of future subscribers they won't get. Or the current subscribers that will cancel in six months. And of course when they see the worse-than-expected subscriber base in a year, they'll use that as the justification for another "successful" price increase. (Anyone that had cable 15 years ago knows what I'm talking about.)
  - indeed30 2y ago
    I would be pretty confident that Disney has a pricing team whose entire job is to model those effects.
    - Aromasin 2y ago
      And I'm sure they'll do what every pricing model analyst does, which is simplify things to N=1, average across all factors to determine what the market is willing to bear according to GDP, missing out how inequality of wealth plays into these market dynamics and potential customer base. The price is affordable as per the model, but in reality the only people that can afford it are a fraction of people who have most of the wealth, because N=!1 but 8.2B, of which only a fraction have the money to spend of frivolities when fighting tooth and nail for food, housing, and healthcare.
n144q 2y ago
That's almost a negligible number considering the additional revenue the price increase brought in.
Ralfp 2y ago
Together with price raise they stopped doing voice over in my language for new content and I’ve been watching it mostly together with my parents. Seeing how I’ve didnt watch anything on it for two months, I guess time to cancell to.
josefresco 2y ago
> Disney's overall revenue grew 4.8 percent Is there a breakdown for just Disney+? As others have pointed out, losing 700K subs seems like a win considering the cost went up 15%-25%.
mossTechnician 2y ago
Does ending your subscription also end your agreement to their Terms of Service?
- lobo_tuerto 2y ago
  I don't think so. So watch out if you have any allergies and go and eat something at Disneyland. ;)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
graemep 2y ago
A resounding success then. A negligible loss of customers in the face of a 25% price increase.
gherkinnn 2y ago
These companies must be trying how far they can go before piracy starts being the easier solution again.
- hotpocket777 2y ago
  It already is
  - sparsely 2y ago
    For example subtitles are terrible on most major streaming services, either don't exist, or are only available in one language. Sometimes they don't even have the original audio track, only a dubbed one! Piracy ensures that multi-language families can happily watch a movie together.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
      I don't disagree, but finding content in Italian through official or side channels is always hard. Which is sad, because it's one of the ways I make sure my kids get enough Italian exposure (we emigrated)
- randunel 2y ago
  The only reason piracy isn't easy is because of TV vendors gatekeeping what software these TVs run. Unless you use Plex, which allows your own content (but still disallows torrent streaming or sharing your analog TV with your users, so not ideal), you're SOL.
  - PetitPrince 2y ago
    > Unless you use Plex, which allows your own content [...] you're SOL. ... how about connecting a computer to your TV ? Inconvenient depending on your setup, but not hopeless.
    - spwa4 2y ago
falcor84 2y ago
There's also another big issue with their new single household approach - there's now no way to have a single user across two devices on separate wi-fi networks, even if they're in the same area and even if you pay them for the extra sharing (you only get a new user). So that means that Disney+ no longer works for kids of divorced/separated parents. This is particularly frustrating given that other providers like Netflix, Prime, and Apple TV don't have this restriction.
- bagels 2y ago
  So, you're saying that I couldn't watch on my desktop at home, and on my laptop at school for instance?
  - falcor84 2y ago
    The way I understand their mechanism, it lets you log in on a separate device, but will complain if you don't connect that device to your "household" wi-fi within a few days, and will then force you to either stop using your Disney+ account on that new device, or to transfer your "household" to its current wi-fi network, disabling the devices on the old network, and giving you a limited amount of such transfers. So it's ok for phones/tablets/laptops that get moved around, but blocks usage on PCs or TVs across networks.
    - walteweiss 2y ago
      [dead]
- progforlyfe 2y ago
  it's all so fucking stupid. why do they care WHERE you're watching the content if you're paying for 1, 2, ... N seats per month? Besides which country you're in, which I could understand.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- 2y ago
ubermonkey 2y ago
Bad headline. 700k is virtually nothing to them.
nozzlegear 2y ago
Does this account for the "seasonal" watching that some people do? For example, I subscribed to Disney+ to watch Skeleton Crew recently, and then unsubscribed when the season concluded. The price change didn't factor into my decision (I wasn't even aware their prices had changed).
carb 2y ago
There was a price increase, but there was also an explicit elevation of Disney+ from a "Pressure Target" to a "Priority Target" of the BDS movement last December.[1] I know anecdotally dozens of people, including myself, who have made the sometimes difficult decision to cancel Disney+ subscriptions to avoid crossing the picket line. I haven't heard anyone making a fuss about the price increase, specifically. [1]: https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott
mrweasel 2y ago
While I do think streaming is becoming a bit to expensive. We have Disney+, Max and Netflix (which we could probably do without). Those combined are still cheaper than basic cable TV, by about $25 per year, with no ads and honestly better content. My biggest annoyance is more that it's so difficult to find anything. I know Apple have attempted to fix that on the AppleTV, but it requires everyone to implement it and only Max seems to care to do that. The music industry figured it out, it basically doesn't matter which service you subscribe to, they'll all have almost everything, it's stupid that the TV and movie industry can't come together an have a sort of clearing house for rights, but their making more money this way.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Presumably it's because music is far cheaper to produce and distribute.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > I know Apple have attempted to fix that on the AppleTV, but it requires everyone to implement it and only Max seems to care to do that. Netflix is the only one that does not make their content searchable in the TV app. You should be able to find all Disney/Comcast/AMC/Paramount/etc stuff in the TV app.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
andyish 2y ago
If their target demo are families it's not a stretch to how two households would share the subscription and so the cost then with the price increase and their recently implement single household restrictions it's getting dropped.
waltercool 2y ago
I'm sure it's not jusy because of their price. Most of their latest shows are just bad and not original et all.

75 points by mgh2 2y ago

I remember when ad-free was $7/mo. All good things come to an end. Here we are, 6 years later, with 128% markup. We’re also at the level where you need to watch more than 4 Disney movies per week (edit: month, typo) to justify not renting. For some families this is easy - for my childhood, where we had one “movie night” per week, this would have been a tough sell.

jjice 2y ago
4 per week? I see the ad-free price now is $16. 4 per week would be 16 per month. Most rentals I've seen (through something like Amazon) run $4. Am I missing a cheaper rental service that runs about $1 per film?
- stego-tech 2y ago
  While they still existed, yes: video stores. Catalog movies (that is, not new releases) could often be had for $1 a night. Most were run out of business due to streaming, but if you have one nearby, it’s almost certainly cheaper and better quality than streaming. Plus you’d be supporting a local business in the process.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Am I missing a cheaper rental service that runs about $1 per film? Your local public library? In some cities, they're really well stocked when it comes to video. And many have video streaming services, or sometimes even "community" subscriptions to Netflix or whatever that you can check out for a week at a time. Your tax dollars at work.
- stevekemp 2y ago
  > Am I missing a cheaper rental service that runs about $1 per film? Honestly where I am I can buy used DVDs for €1 each. I actually went out and bought a DVD player to connect to my TV a year or so ago, because the price was just so compelling. One benefit to physical DVDs are that they can't disappear like a streaming-service can, you paid for it and you get to own it "forever". DVDs often have subtitles, which is nice for language-learners like me. (I used to stream content from my PC, via VLC, to a chromecase, but subtitles were never streamed. That was annoying, but not a huge deal.) It might not apply to all, and local shops are very expensive for "new" releases, but if you have a lot of used stores DVDs are essentially free for both TV series and films.
mcphage 2y ago
> you need to watch more than 4 Disney movies per week to justify not renting How so? At $16/month, that's 1 $4 rental per week. Or are you getting $1 rentals somewhere?
- rdsnsca 2y ago
  DVD"s sell at flea markets / yard sales for $1 doller each here.

burkaman 2y ago

A decrease of about 0.6% of the subscriber base after a much larger than 0.6% price increase, so I'm guessing they consider this a success.

itishappy 2y ago
"Disney+ gains $480 in revenue following price increase"
- jve 2y ago
  Less users means less operational cost I guess.
  - paxys 2y ago
    Change in operating costs are probably a rounding error either way, considering the vast majority of expenses are content production and engineer salaries, and those are fixed.
bachmeier 2y ago
> I'm guessing they consider this a success. I'm sure they do. Of course that doesn't count the number of new subscribers they would have had, but didn't get. Or the number of future subscribers they won't get. Or the current subscribers that will cancel in six months. And of course when they see the worse-than-expected subscriber base in a year, they'll use that as the justification for another "successful" price increase. (Anyone that had cable 15 years ago knows what I'm talking about.)
- indeed30 2y ago
  I would be pretty confident that Disney has a pricing team whose entire job is to model those effects.
  - Aromasin 2y ago
    And I'm sure they'll do what every pricing model analyst does, which is simplify things to N=1, average across all factors to determine what the market is willing to bear according to GDP, missing out how inequality of wealth plays into these market dynamics and potential customer base. The price is affordable as per the model, but in reality the only people that can afford it are a fraction of people who have most of the wealth, because N=!1 but 8.2B, of which only a fraction have the money to spend of frivolities when fighting tooth and nail for food, housing, and healthcare.

n144q 2y ago

That's almost a negligible number considering the additional revenue the price increase brought in.

Ralfp 2y ago

Together with price raise they stopped doing voice over in my language for new content and I’ve been watching it mostly together with my parents. Seeing how I’ve didnt watch anything on it for two months, I guess time to cancell to.

josefresco 2y ago

> Disney's overall revenue grew 4.8 percent Is there a breakdown for just Disney+? As others have pointed out, losing 700K subs seems like a win considering the cost went up 15%-25%.

mossTechnician 2y ago

Does ending your subscription also end your agreement to their Terms of Service?

lobo_tuerto 2y ago
I don't think so. So watch out if you have any allergies and go and eat something at Disneyland. ;)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

graemep 2y ago

A resounding success then. A negligible loss of customers in the face of a 25% price increase.

gherkinnn 2y ago

These companies must be trying how far they can go before piracy starts being the easier solution again.

hotpocket777 2y ago
It already is
- sparsely 2y ago
  For example subtitles are terrible on most major streaming services, either don't exist, or are only available in one language. Sometimes they don't even have the original audio track, only a dubbed one! Piracy ensures that multi-language families can happily watch a movie together.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
    I don't disagree, but finding content in Italian through official or side channels is always hard. Which is sad, because it's one of the ways I make sure my kids get enough Italian exposure (we emigrated)
randunel 2y ago
The only reason piracy isn't easy is because of TV vendors gatekeeping what software these TVs run. Unless you use Plex, which allows your own content (but still disallows torrent streaming or sharing your analog TV with your users, so not ideal), you're SOL.
- PetitPrince 2y ago
  > Unless you use Plex, which allows your own content [...] you're SOL. ... how about connecting a computer to your TV ? Inconvenient depending on your setup, but not hopeless.
  - spwa4 2y ago

falcor84 2y ago

There's also another big issue with their new single household approach - there's now no way to have a single user across two devices on separate wi-fi networks, even if they're in the same area and even if you pay them for the extra sharing (you only get a new user). So that means that Disney+ no longer works for kids of divorced/separated parents. This is particularly frustrating given that other providers like Netflix, Prime, and Apple TV don't have this restriction.

bagels 2y ago
So, you're saying that I couldn't watch on my desktop at home, and on my laptop at school for instance?
- falcor84 2y ago
  The way I understand their mechanism, it lets you log in on a separate device, but will complain if you don't connect that device to your "household" wi-fi within a few days, and will then force you to either stop using your Disney+ account on that new device, or to transfer your "household" to its current wi-fi network, disabling the devices on the old network, and giving you a limited amount of such transfers. So it's ok for phones/tablets/laptops that get moved around, but blocks usage on PCs or TVs across networks.
  - walteweiss 2y ago
    [dead]
progforlyfe 2y ago
it's all so fucking stupid. why do they care WHERE you're watching the content if you're paying for 1, 2, ... N seats per month? Besides which country you're in, which I could understand.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
2y ago

ubermonkey 2y ago

Bad headline. 700k is virtually nothing to them.

nozzlegear 2y ago

Does this account for the "seasonal" watching that some people do? For example, I subscribed to Disney+ to watch Skeleton Crew recently, and then unsubscribed when the season concluded. The price change didn't factor into my decision (I wasn't even aware their prices had changed).

carb 2y ago

There was a price increase, but there was also an explicit elevation of Disney+ from a "Pressure Target" to a "Priority Target" of the BDS movement last December.[1] I know anecdotally dozens of people, including myself, who have made the sometimes difficult decision to cancel Disney+ subscriptions to avoid crossing the picket line. I haven't heard anyone making a fuss about the price increase, specifically. [1]: https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott

mrweasel 2y ago

While I do think streaming is becoming a bit to expensive. We have Disney+, Max and Netflix (which we could probably do without). Those combined are still cheaper than basic cable TV, by about $25 per year, with no ads and honestly better content. My biggest annoyance is more that it's so difficult to find anything. I know Apple have attempted to fix that on the AppleTV, but it requires everyone to implement it and only Max seems to care to do that. The music industry figured it out, it basically doesn't matter which service you subscribe to, they'll all have almost everything, it's stupid that the TV and movie industry can't come together an have a sort of clearing house for rights, but their making more money this way.

robertlagrant 2y ago
Presumably it's because music is far cheaper to produce and distribute.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
> I know Apple have attempted to fix that on the AppleTV, but it requires everyone to implement it and only Max seems to care to do that. Netflix is the only one that does not make their content searchable in the TV app. You should be able to find all Disney/Comcast/AMC/Paramount/etc stuff in the TV app.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

andyish 2y ago

If their target demo are families it's not a stretch to how two households would share the subscription and so the cost then with the price increase and their recently implement single household restrictions it's getting dropped.

waltercool 2y ago

I'm sure it's not jusy because of their price. Most of their latest shows are just bad and not original et all.