Shortly after losing shows like American Dad, Bob’s Burgers, and 30 Rock to competitor Hulu and watching as Disney ended a sweet partnership and decided to launch its own streaming service, Netflix has announced that it’s raising the monthly price of both its standard and premium streaming plans. This comes from Variety, which says the current standard price will be increasing by $1 from $10 per month to $11. The premium version, which offers 4K content and lets a bunch of people stream things at once, will be increasing by $2 from $12 to $14. If you don’t care about video quality, the non-HD “basic” plan will remain at $8.
This is the first time Netflix has raised prices since October of 2015, when new subscribers first had to pay $10 per month. Existing subscribers were grandfathered into their old prices for a few months after that, but Netflix eventually started making everyone pay the same price. That delay won’t be nearly as pronounced this time around, as new subscribers will have to pay the increased price immediately, but existing subscribers will start being notified of the new price on October 19. Their next bill after that will most likely reflect the new price—so we all might be able to cram in the whole new season of Stranger Things before having to pay that extra buck.
In addition to the recent bloodletting of content, this price increase also comes in the wake of Netflix throwing trucks full of money at exclusive movies, TV shows, and comedy specials, including a reported $100 million spent to lure Jerry Seinfeld over. That stuff obviously isn’t going to pay for itself.