If it's a day ending in "y", it's a day when the price of a streaming service is going up –and today's such service is Crunchyroll. Subscribers who've been used to several years of static subscription prices are about to get a financial shock in several countries where both the Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan plans are going up.
The standard Crunchyroll Premium tier will stay the same for now at $7.99 per month. But the cost of Mega Fan will go up from $9.99 per month to $11.99 per month, and the price of the Ultimate Fan tier will rise from $14.99 to $15.99 per month.
As The Verge reports, the service is also shortening its free trial period: that's going down from two weeks to one. Although the new prices aren't being implemented worldwide, they are being rolled out in the US alongside Argentina, Colombia, France, Portugal and "select additional countries".
Who's next for a streaming subscription price hike?
The most likely source of your next subscription sting is Spotify, which has already (as of the start May) increased its subscription fees in the UK. The same will happen in the US "later this year", Bloomberg reports. Expect an increase of $1 per month for individual plans and $2 per month for family and duo plans.
Which service could be next? There was also talk earlier this year about another potential Netflix price hike followed by most recently Peacock, so it doesn't look to be slowing down any time soon. The price hikes had been kicked off by Disney Plus' eye-watering increase in January, with services like the UK's Sky joining next.
It does feel that the various music and TV streaming services are marching in lockstep not just with pricing but with their explanations for it. The money's to pay for "additional investment", "additional services" and "additional subscriber benefits". Was that Crunchyroll, Netflix, Spotify, or another streamer?
In fairness to Sony, the price hikes aren't massive – but if like us you subscribe to a bunch of different streaming services, what feels like never-ending price increases are taking an increasingly big bite out of wages that certainly aren't going up by the same percentage points, if they're going up at all. One price hike is a bit like one wasp sting: individually it's not too terrible, but if a whole bunch of wasps come at you...
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