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Television Apple

Apple Raises Prices of TV+, Arcade, One, News+ 36

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Apple is increasing the prices of some of its subscription-based services, including Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+, in the U.S. and many other countries around the world. The higher prices are shown on Apple's website. The price changes in the U.S. are as follows: Apple TV+: $6.99 per month to $9.99 per month
Apple Arcade: $4.99 per month to $6.99 per month
Apple News+: $9.99 per month to $12.99 per month

For those who subscribe to Apple TV+ on an annual basis, the price has increased from $69 per year to $99 per year accordingly. Prices for the Apple One bundles that include these services are also increasing as a result:
Individual: $16.95 per month to $19.95 per month
Family: $22.95 per month to $25.95 per month
Premier: $32.95 per month to $37.95 per month.
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Apple Raises Prices of TV+, Arcade, One, News+ More

Apple Raises Prices of TV+, Arcade, One, News+

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  • Timely (Score:4, Insightful)

    by boulat ( 216724 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @10:49AM (#63952819)

    Oh good, just in time for me to continue not using them.

    • Yep. If this were Cable TV, it would be part of a "take it or leave it" bundle. With streaming, I can continue subscribing to the services I want and not subscribing to the services I don't want.

      • Re:Timely (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @12:18PM (#63953109) Journal

        With streaming, I can continue subscribing to the services I want and not subscribing to the services I don't want.

        Okay industry shrill. Counterpoints:

        • With CATV, you could use a DVR, and skip all ads with minimal fuss. With SVOD that option is being taken away from you. Ads were always un-skippable and now they're even creeping into the so-called "ad free" tiers you pay more money for.
        • You do not have the option to subscribe to just what you want. You are still being forced into bundles. Witness the forced merger of HBO and Discovery and rebrand of HBO into Max. Witness Disney bundling ESPN into their SVOD services.
        • CATV included local channels. In fact, it started out as a way to receive them, for folks who otherwise could not (Community Antenna TeleVision) SVOD does not. You may not care, but local TV is hugely valuable for people who live in areas prone to severe weather (tornado alley) and the slow death of local journalism (not all the fault of SVOD) is doing society a huge disservice.
        • CATV (re)airings of new and established shows paid actual residuals to writers and actors. Those shows generally had more episodes per season. The WGA/SAG strikes have shown us that SVOD is built on the back of labor, just like the Amazon model, and the so-called Gig economy. Silicon Valley's "revolution" was to update the 19th Century robber baron playbook with modern technology.
        • Whatever consumer friendly "life hacks" that exist in SVOD are being taken away one by one. The password sharing they implicitly (sometimes explicitly) encouraged you to do? Gone. How long do you suppose before annual commitments come back to close the "loophole" of only subscribing for a month to binge your favorite content?

        Don't mistake the above as an endorsement of CATV. I remember all the reasons why it sucked. In hindsight though, with the exception of the lousy customer service (see various South Park memes and scenes) most of the reasons why it sucked had to do with the studios and networks. Once digital cable became a thing, unbundling was possible (it was not technically feasible in the analog era), except, Disney won't let you get the Disney Channel without ESPN. That wasn't your cable company's fault. It was Disney's and they're still at it in the SVOD era. The never ending rate hikes that exceed inflation year after year, your cable company was a middle man for those, now you're seeing them directly.

        As far as I can tell, the new SVOD Boss is just as bad as the CATV Boss of yesteryear, except, now, instead of paying one company to screw you over, you get to pay a half dozen different companies to do the same thing. Bonus points, the SVOD Boss employs zero people in your town and gets to blame any issues with quality of service on third parties. When my cable cut out I could call someone to fix it. When SVOD cuts out it's my ISP's fault, except, weird, the rest of the Internet is working, down the rabbit hole of buck passing and blame assignment I go, when all I really wanted to do was watch the latest Star Trek episode. :-(

        • As far as I can tell, the new SVOD Boss is just as bad as the CATV Boss of yesteryear, (snip)

          Well, of course it is - pretty much the same people who were in charge of the individual cable channels before are running the streaming services now. And the cable company is still in the mix, just at a different point.

          I wonder how long it'll be before "cutting the stream" becomes a widespread phenomenon?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shakrai ( 717556 )

            I wonder how long it'll be before "cutting the stream" becomes a widespread phenomenon?

            The value of OTA is being eroded at both ends. The FCC keeps "reclaiming" spectrum from broadcast television to sell to the cellular companies (separate rant that). They're being squeezed out of the syndication business as more and more content holders bottle up their prime IP behind SVOD services. Paramount's decision to paywall Star Trek was the eye opening moment for me. In hindsight, it was the most predictable thing ever, and you can count on that happening until there's nothing left but soap opera

          • That and bundling. I think T-Mobile bundles AppleTV, otherwise the AppleOne service includes it like Amazon Prime includes Prime Video. I have Verizon and have a Hulu/Disney+ bundle for free. Not being bundled with a service provider will leave the other streaming platforms more victim to rotating subscriptions and binging content before moving on.
      • Cable TV and Streaming services all suck. You can have exactly the series & movies you want, commercial free, without bundling and having to pay for a bunch of crap you don't want...so long as you're willing to pirate the content. It's unfortunate that a service most people would willingly pay for is not offered by businesses because it gives the consumer too much control, freedom, and power.

        Would a model like this cause quality programming to suffer? People surely like to say so, but I've yet to see

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Don't worry, I'm sure that you'll get another "free" three months the next time that you buy another Mac or Apple iDevice.

      They don't really release a lot of new content, so you can pretty much binge your way through everything worth watching in their back catalog in about a month.

    • 100% agree.
      I too have zero subscriptions, and will continue to have zero subscriptions
      I have dumped software that has gone to subscription models , in app purchases , or micro payments.

  • At the moment I have Apple TV+ for "free" through my T-Mobile cell plan. However if I was subscribing directly this would make me more likely to subscribe for a month and binge everything I want to see and then unsubscribe for a few months.

    This may be why they are looking to add sports packages that don't work with binge watching. Currently they have MLS, and got a boost when Messi signed for Inter Miami, there are also rumors that they are looking in to other sposrts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 )

      At the moment I have Apple TV+ for "free" through my T-Mobile cell plan

      Count on those perks ending soon. The cellular companies are not going to have an unlimited appetite for absorbing increases that exceed inflation. Verizon already discontinued their plans that bundled in various stream services at no extra fee. Current subscribers are Grandfathered, for now, but the e-mail I recently got strongly implies that future cost increases will be passed along to me rather than covered. I have a very hard time not seeing T-Mobile follow in their footsteps, they'll either remove

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      ... there are also rumors that they are looking in to other sports.

      Apple TV is looking into other sports. They were looking at adding collegiate sports featuring the Pac-12 conference (a group of larger universities in the western United States).

      The result of this proposed deal is that the majority of conference members are leaving for other conferences that have more conventional broadcasting deals, and the conference will likely cease operations at the end of the scholastic year.

      Source: https://theathletic.com/4752583/2023/08/05/pac12-apple-tv-deal-college-football-rea [theathletic.com]

  • Well it's worth it (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @11:18AM (#63952883)

    just for Jon Stewart.

  • Outpacing inflation. Gee Thanks. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Outpacing inflation causes inflation. Just say no.

  • i guess Apple is hurting financially, (Score:3)

    by Darth Technoid ( 83199 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @12:23PM (#63953137)

    i guess Apple is hurting financially,
    and needs to move from Trillion dollar valuations to Gazillion dollar

  • Tim Cook Now Dishing Out Inflationary Pressure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by theodp ( 442580 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @12:37PM (#63953205)

    "We are seeing inflationary pressure," Tim Cook complained to CNBC in Jan 2022 [cnbc.com]. But since then, Cook and Apple have been relieving themselves of some of that inflationary pressure by passing it on to Apple TV+ subscribers, first in an Oct 2022 rate hike [macrumors.com] from $4.99 to $6.99 and now in this Oct 2023 rate hike from $6.99 to $9.99, a 100% increase in pricing in just 12 months. Hey, when life gives your corporation inflation lemons, make jacked-up-prices [usatoday.com] lemonade!

    • Jacking up prices is easier than, I don't know, innovating and coming up with new shit people want.
      Tim Cook's CEO tenure being adjacent to Steve Jobs just makes his ineptness look that much more stark.

      • Jacking up prices is easier than, I don't know, innovating and coming up with new shit people want. Tim Cook's CEO tenure being adjacent to Steve Jobs just makes his ineptness look that much more stark.

        I signed up for Apple TV+ for Ted Lasso. Watched a couple other things that were OK. But it's got literally less than 10 things worth watching. Why the fuck would I pay MORE for it. I just cancelled my sub.

        • Seems to me you're describing just about every streaming service out there. New shows have very short seasons (7 - 10 episodes). And abundance of 3 episode "series". Once you get through the new and legacy content, there just isn't much let to watch let along pay more for.

  • Shame on you! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How dare you not buy more iPhones +1, more iPads +1, and more M++ Macbooks. You have failed our saviors, those that have so graciously locked us into the iApple-verse, where we are blessed with an overpriced dumbed down experience. They had no choice but to raise their prices for even bigger profit margins. Shame on you!
  • The content that Apple offered at the lower prices wasn't worth the money then and is now worth even less with the new higher prices so if you haven't opted out of Apple's offerings, this latest price gouge is a great opportunity to JUST SAY NO.
  • Apple News+ is innovative at least. You subscribe to it for the privilege of getting to double-subscribe to access content.
  • They appear to have not learned the lessons from the poor performance of their ridiculously priced iPhone sales, that people generally don't have as much money as they did before 2023, and decided that upping subscriptions by 40% to 50% is a good way to make up for drop in revenue. No doubt there'll be the usual platitudes about funding new content etc etc....

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