Looking to continue to watch and stream films and televisions show from the video-sharing company Netflix? You still can, but it will be costing you an extra dollar monthly to maintain subscription, a move the company hopes will help shore up revenue streams.
The new price hike means in the United States, it will cost an extra dollar to have Netflix, while in the United Kingdom one pound more and in Europe an extra euro.
While that may initially frustrate users of the popular service, in the UK for example, the company did say that for those already customers, their rates would not be changing immediately.
"As a thank you for being a member of Netflix already, we guarantee that your plan and price will not change for two years," UK Netflix said.
The move had been expected after first quarter earnings were not exactly where the company wanted and the announcement comes as the streaming service, which has launched a number of original content in the past few years, wants to expand.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that most of the revenue resulting from the higher prices would help to fund Netflix's budget for content.
"If we want to continue to expand ... we have to eventually increase prices a little bit," he said after the earnings report went public.
Hastings had initially told users that it would be increasing the prices, which led to fears that existing subscribers would be forced immediately to pay the hike without notice, much as it did when Netflix separated DVDs in the mail versus streaming into two distinct payment options, which at the time was a 60 percent increase in monthly fees.
This time around, the company seems to have figured out the PR situation and has locked in existing customers for two years before their rates increase, which has helped ease the worries going forward for the company.
For now, it appears that the small hike has not led to much anger among users, unlike in 2011 with the DVD hike, which has many believing that Netflix has figured out its problems and is tackling specific issues with precision as it hopes to increase its profits in order to develop new content exclusively on the streaming service online.
