Hulu Is Dropping The Price On Their Most Popular Plan Following Netflix’s Announced Increases

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Hulu is coming for Netflix subscribers, and it’s not even being subtle about it. After upstaging Netflix’s Fyre Festival documentary by surprise-dropping its own Fyre Fraud just days before — in a spectacularly obvious move — Hulu has now announced plans to drop the price of its (most popular) basic subscription plan from $7.99 to just $5.99. The move comes just a week after Netflix announced that it would be increasing subscriptions across the board to meet increased costs, as the streaming giant is adding original films and series at a dizzying speed.

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that Hulu’s base plan will still be ad-supported, and the price drop won’t affect the $11.99-per-month ad-free plan, nor would it affect the $12.99 Spotify bundle, as Spotify manages billing for that plan.

Earlier this month Hulu announced that it had nearly doubled subscribers in 2018, surpassing 25 million to Netflix’s over 137 million.

The buried lede here is that Hulu will also be raising the price of its Hulu with Live TV service plan from $39.99 to $44.99 per month, due to increased channel selections after reaching an agreement with Discovery, Inc. in September. However, it will be lowering the price of live TV add-ons to offset those rising costs, via The Verge:

In an attempt to balance out the higher subscription charge, Hulu is lowering its fees for the live TV service’s optional add-ons: both the enhanced DVR and expanded multiscreen viewing packages are dropping to $9.99 from $14.99. The DVR option gives customers more storage (200 hours versus 50 hours for standard live TV subscribers) and allows them to fast-forward through commercials in DVR’d content.

In either case, the new pricing structure might end up being moot pending a deal with Disney to assume majority ownership of Hulu, which would likely factor in Disney’s upcoming Disney+ streaming service.

As streaming wars continue to come to a boil, don’t expect any of this to get any less exhausting.

(Via The Verge)

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