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Nothing is safe from a price hike these days from food to Netflix and, just announced through its quarterly earnings release, Amazon Prime. Starting this month, subscriptions will cost 15% more than they have been.
Apparently Sonos speakers weren't expensive enough already, so here are some 'helpful' price hikes
As in, helping you to spend more money
If you've tried to make a big purchase over the last year or so, you've probably noticed some severe fluctuations in the market. Thanks to a global chip shortage, everything from cars to gaming consoles are experiencing production issues, and Sonos is the next company to feel its effects.
Your Hulu plan is about to get more expensive
It's a $1 price hike for standard and ad-free, bundles and live TV remain the same
Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, streaming television services gotta get more expensive. So it goes with Hulu, the latest cord-cutting library of movies, TV shows, and original productions to get a little bit more expensive, and hope you won't notice. The price jump is scheduled for October 8th, after which most Hulu subscribers will be paying an extra dollar every month.
Philo is raising its price, because that's just what streaming TV services do now
It's jumping from $20 to $25 next month with some extra DVR time
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to reap. A time to increase the price of a streaming TV subscription, and that time is all the freakin' time. The time has come for Philo, a service that's practically built on being cheaper than pretty much every alternative. You didn't need the wisdom of Solomon to see this one coming.
Wyze is raising prices — again
Shipping will also be included in prices going forward, though this is still a price bump on top of that
Last year, Wyze made a whole lot of noise about how the new Cam v3 would deliver a bunch of enhancements for the same $20 price. Come launch day, the company couldn't hold true to its word, raising prices to $24 (before shipping) or requiring that you pay more on the side for a subscription service to get that original price. The company even buried those original claims regarding pricing when we called them out for it. Now Wyze is back with another price bump: The Wyze Cam v3 will cost $33. At least shipping is included this time.
If Spotify just increased its subscriber count by 21%, why are its prices going up?
Not so it can give more money to artists, sadly
The last few weeks have been jam-packed with Spotify announcements. The music streaming giant made some big moves, from its first hardware product to an all-new redesigned desktop experience. None are quite as controversial as yesterday's price hikes, raising subscription fees for customers throughout much of the world. All eyes have been focused on the company's Q1 earnings report, as rumors of a potential slowdown in subscribers swelled over the weekend. However, that doesn't seem to be the case.
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After months of rumors about a potential Spotify price hike, it's finally happening. Affected customers have been sent emails with the bad news, and the new pricing model is set to come into effect from June 2021 for current subscribers and from the end of April for new users. The change impacts Premium Student, Duo, and Family plans in Europe and the UK, with your monthly fee set to go up by around £1-2 (€1-3). Folks in the US are luckier, though, with only the Premium Family plan affected by a single dollar. We should point out that in all cases, the "standard" Spotify Premium plan is unaffected — for now.
Disney+ has now gobbled up an impressive 137 million subscribers around the world. Considering that Netflix has a little over 200 million, and it's been at this game for more than a decade, it's fair to call Disney's streaming service an incredible success. But pretty soon it's going to cost a little more to get your weekly hit of Marvel, Star Wars, Disney princesses, yadda yadda.
Nvidia GeForce Now's premium tier gets a price bump
Existing Founders subscribers can keep the old $5 plan, free option still available
GeForce Now is an intriguing option in the streaming game marketplace, appealing to those who've already built up a huge library of PC games. A year after the service exited beta, Nvidia says it's increasing the price for the Priority membership (previously called "Founders") from $5 to $10 a month. A $100 a year option is also available—both choices are exactly twice as expensive as before.
Netflix would now like up to $18 a month to cancel your favorite shows
That's more than Hulu with ads plus Disney+, if you're looking for new services
Netflix is following up on last year's price hike with yet another. While most folks are looking to cut costs here at the end of 2020, subscribers can look forward to paying $18 a month for the "Premium" 4K 4-screen streaming plan, or $14 a month for the Standard 2-screen HD plan. Folks using the single-screen SD "Basic" Netflix plan will keep paying the same $9 a month, though, and T-Mobile's Netflix On Us perk is not changing, though the increase will pass through if you used it to upgrade to a higher tier.
Good news and bad news, Sling subscribers. The good news is that your package, be it Orange or Blue, is getting new features. But they're also both increasing in price, from $25 to $30 per month. If you've got both, you'll pay an additional $5, too: that plan is now $45.
Given that many phones are now in the four-figure territory, it makes sense for people to want to insure them. Unfortunately for those people, Verizon's Total Mobile Protection insurance is getting its second price increase in 15 months. Starting June 27, the service will cost $15/month, up from $13, and the only bonus from this is the addition of battery replacement services.
YouTube TV started out at $34.99/month, though the price was raised to $39.99/month not long after. Google tends to grandfather early subscribers into their lower prices, like with Play Music and YouTube Premium, but that's not the case here. Even the earliest of subscribers will soon be required to pay the new $49.99/month fee.
Hulu is rejiggering its pricing model next month. Beginning February 26, the streaming provider's entry-level on-demand package — the one that shows ads with each video — is going down in price by a couple bucks, while the cost of adding live TV to your plan will go up. Hulu's ad-free on-demand plan will stay the same price.
Last week, Amazon announced it would be increasing the price of its yearly Prime membership subscription from $99 to $119 starting May 11 and June 16 for renewals. Prime has gradually become more expensive over time — the last time the price of a yearly subscription increased was in March 2014, from $79 to $99 — and while it's hard to argue that you're not getting plenty of value for what you're paying, no one likes to have to pay more for something. Fortunately, there's an easy way to save $20 off your subscription, allowing you to lock in the current price of $99 for the foreseeable future.The trick involves purchasing a Prime Gift card and using it on yourself, and should work as long as you buy it before May 11, when Prime's price increases. It's very straightforward and won't take more than a couple of minutes, though there are some caveats you may want to consider if you've had Prime since before August 2015, which we'll talk about in a bit.Here's what you need to do to keep paying $99 for Prime:
It's pretty safe to say that Amazon Prime is a very popular service, what with over 100 million subscribers. Many will call Prime invaluable, from the great shipping options to the wide selection of media to consume. But a change is coming and it's coming soon: Amazon is raising the U.S. annual fee for Prime to $119, versus the $99 it is currently. This price hike will affect new subscribers starting on May 11 while renewals will still get the $99 price until June 16.This information comes courtesy of Amazon's Q1 earnings call, starting at the 5:15 mark. If you're interested in hearing for yourself, you can listen to the webcast in the source link below. This fee increase is supposedly to reflect the higher investments that Amazon is making in the Prime program. The company has kept the price of Prime consistent since the last hike in March 2014, when it jumped to $99 annually from $79. People weren't too happy back then, myself included, so I can't imagine that this second $20 increase will go over too well. However, it'll likely be another case of people making a huge fuss while they continue to enjoy their Prime subscription.If you aren't signed up for Prime, now's the time to do it. Again, you have until May 11 to get the lower price. Those of you due for renewals, I hope that you just had it or it's coming up before June 16, otherwise, you'll be forking over $119 for another year. The call did not specify if the monthly price will change, but that over the course of a year still costs more than even this new Prime fee. And it's not out of the ordinary for Amazon to run sales on Prime annual subscriptions, though I wouldn't necessarily count on it.Source: Amazon
If your TV is tragically not smart enough—or otherwise lacks a way to play Amazon Prime Video—Amazon has been heavily pushing their line of Fire TV devices since 2014. While the 3rd generation Fire TV started shipping last month, Amazon just announced the new Fire TV Stick Basic Edition. Problem is, there's absolutely nothing new about this at all.The year-old 2nd Generation Fire TV Stick is powered by the quad-core Mediatek 8127D at 1.3 GHz, accompanied with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. It can decode H.265 video, and supports Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11 ac Wi-Fi. The "new" Basic Edition has identical technical specs, and identical physical specs—both are 1.1 oz (32.0 g) and 3.4” x 1.2” x 0.5” (85.9 mm x 30.0 mm x 12.6 mm).The "new" Basic Edition has a different remote compared to the 2nd Generation, it lacks the Alexa voice control integration. The remote itself, though, is actually the remote from the 1st Generation Fire TV Stick. So far, there's a whole lot of "Basic," but no "new" to be found. The product page does not specify the Fire OS version, though the 2nd generation stick is stuck on Fire OS 5, based on the three-year-old Android Lollipop.For unknown reasons, the Basic Edition is $49.99 while the 2nd generation debuted at $39.99. If you feel like paying $10 more to not have Alexa, the Fire TV Stick Basic Edition is available now. It ships to "more than 100 countries around the world," though Amazon doesn't have operations in that many countries. Presumably, it ships from Amazon.com to the countries in question.
Mentioning the words "unlimited" and "AT&T" in the same sentence around the wrong person is bound to draw out a long diatribe of grievances and outrage. I was promised unlimited, not 5GB and a middle finger. AT&T has been throttling existing customers ever since it discontinued unlimited plans in 2010. One thing it hasn't done, however, is raise the price.
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- T-Mobile is now putting a 20GB cap on Data Stash - and it's opt-out. The only way you'll be able to take advantage of Binge On is to participate in the new 20GB capped stash, meaning you won't be able to hoard dozens of gigs for HD streaming over the year, just 20GB. It's on the Binge On FAQ. You have until December 16th, 2015 to opt out of the new, capped stash.
Hey, did you notice yesterday at any point that T-Mobile said it's raising its prices? Well, that's because they never actually said it. They even got us - with all the talk of unlimited video streaming and double data, seemingly almost nobody noticed that the Uncarrier has raised prices on most of its Simple Choice data plans, and substantially if you want unlimited. While current customers won't see a rate increase per T-Mobile's promise of never raising your bill, new individual customers will be paying a fair bit more for data. Here's the breakdown.