By Megan Alexander
The world’s most popular streaming service has upped its prices – the biggest price increase since the company launched the service 12 years ago.
The company’s standard plan, costing $11 per month, will raise to $13 per month. Its premium option, which doubles the number of screens you can watch Netflix programming on and allows for Ultra HD content, will cost $16 per month, up from $14. Netflix’s basic plan is jumping from $8 per month to $9 per month.
A spokesperson for Netflix said in a statement that the reasoning behind this is to allow it to “continue investing in great entertainment and improving the overall Netflix experience for the benefit of our members.”
This price change impacts all users, especially college students. With the budgeting that comes with attending college, these students will hurt if they continue to subscribe to the streaming service.
One reason for the upping in price is, original shows owned by Netflix are expensive. “Stranger Things” costs as much as $8 million per episode. Netflix has to pay for all of that up front. Multiply that by the hundreds of hours of original content that Netflix produces every year, and the cash starts to bleed out.
Spending big on content while keeping prices modest has helped Netflix expand its customer base, about 58 million in the United States and 130 million worldwide.
