Netflix is ringing in the new year with two big pieces of news. First, in the fourth quarter of 2024, subscriber count crossed the 300 million mark and revenue growth wildly exceeded expectations. Second, despite this apparent success, the wildly popular streaming video service is looking for even more money and will be bumping up prices across all of its subscription tiers, including its first-ever price hike on its ad-supported plan. These increases, which will affect the U.S., Canada, Portugal, and Argentina, according to The Verge, run anywhere from an additional $1 to $2.50 per month go into effect during your next billing cycle.
You can expect to pay $2.50 more for the standard, ad-free tier, which goes from $15.50 to $18 per month. The premium tier sees a slightly smaller hike from $23 to to $25 per month. And even the ad-supported tier, which had so far been spared from any increases, is going up from 12.5% from $7 to $8 per month.
In its letter to investors, the company didn’t even try to explain the increases with the usual rationale of increasing costs, simply saying, “As we continue to invest in programming and deliver more value for our members, we will occasionally ask our members to pay a little more so that we can re-invest to further improve Netflix. To that end, we are adjusting prices today across most plans in the US, Canada, Portugal and Argentina.”
Netflix has few real competitors when it comes to breadth of content and the amount of original programming you’ll find on the service. Nonetheless, you may want to check out how it compares to Amazon Prime Video or to Hulu, two of the most popular alternatives.
Should one of these services prove more enticing now that Netflix costs more, here’s a handy guide to canceling your Netflix subscription.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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