Netflix recently dropped two of its subscribers’ favorite shows, “Friends” and “The Office,” giving other streaming services an even better chance at rising to fame and earning subscribers based on the content and prices they place on their services.
“Knives are out, looking to take a big portion out of [Netflix’s] market,” said Eric Schiffer, CEO of consultancy firm Patriarch Organization and a streaming analyst, to The Verge.
“Netflix is not dying,” Schiffer added. “They’re not in existential crisis. It’s just now they have some real competition.”
Netflix has three different streaming plans: a basic plan for $8.99 per month, a standard plan for $12.99 per month and a premium plan costing $15.99 per month.
College students who are swarmed with school costs have good reason to look for a streaming service that is cheap enough for a college budget and has good content. As some of Netflix’s shows are taken down, the company has been releasing more content of its own. Netflix offers popular original shows like “Stranger Things,” “Fuller House,” “Orange is the New Black,” “13 Reasons Why,” and “One Day at a Time.”
For years, Netflix has faced competition from Hulu, a streaming service that offers subscriptions as an ad-on to Spotify subscriptions. People who pay $9.99 per month for Spotify Premium are placed on Hulu’s basic plan (which shows ads) for no additional charge. The basic plan costs $5.99 per month on its own, and the ad-free plan is $11.99 per month. Hulu carries shows including “Grey’s Anatomy,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Law and Order,” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” as well as originals such as “Catch-22.”
Disney+ and NBCUniversal’s Peacock are two incoming streaming services set to compete with Netflix. Peacock, set for release in April 2020, is expected to cost about $10 per month and will include one of the shows being taken down from Netflix, “The Office.” For people with cable, Peacock will be free with ads. The ad-free version is expected to cost $12 to $14 per month.
Disney+ will launch on Nov. 12, and subscribers will have a choice of paying either $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. The streaming service will offer almost all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, the Star Wars series and other popular Disney films like “Frozen.” Overall, it is expected to offer about 7,000 television series episodes and 400 to 500 movies.
There are still other options out there, including Amazon Prime, Apple TV Plus (set for release on Nov. 1) and HBO Max (set for April 2020).
Contact Mariam Guirgis at mariamhany3 ‘at’ gmail.com.