Business

Netflix Raises Prices For Its Customers

It turns out keeping Friends and constantly developing new original content ain’t cheap. Netflix announced that it will increase prices across all of its account tiers in the coming months, raising what you, your parents or that ex you haven’t called in a while pay for access to your favorite shows and movies. Prices will increase between $1 and $2 per account level. The $11-per-month plan will increase to $13, the $14 plan will increase to $16 per month, and the $8 plan will increase to $9 per month. Many have been speculating that the company would raise its prices for some time, given just how much money the company has been pouring into its own original content over the past several years. Netflix reportedly spent $8 billion on its house-produced films and TV shows in 2018 alone, and the company announced in October that it had plans to take on an additional $2 billion in debt to finance new projects. Netflix had a negative cash flow of $3 billion in 2018 and is reportedly expecting about the same in 2019. Investors in Netflix are likely to be happy with the price increases, given the company’s debt, and in keeping with this theory, Netflix shares were up 6 percent when the market opened this morning. Netflix is easily among the most popular paid video services on the internet, with more than 58 million subscribers in the United States, and more than 137 million globally, making the price hike and effective way to raise capital. Time will tell whether other subscription services, like Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, will raise their prices to match Netflix, or will continue at current prices to attempt to convince subscribers to go with them instead. One thing’s for sure: The streaming video wars are just heating up. Apple is also expected to launch a video streaming service at some point this year and Disney also plans to launch its own service, called Disney+, in 2019. NBC Universal has also recently announced that it planned to launch its own streaming service in 2020. Looking to stream something fun before the changes hit your pocketbook? Check out our list of the best shows to stream on Netflix right now.