In less than a year, Denis Legault and Marie Beauchamp, from Sainte-Thérèse, saw their Apple TV subscription bill double. With two significant increases, this service launched in 2019 by Apple to compete with Netflix will now cost them $129 instead of $59.99.
“I think it’s really exaggerated,” says Mr. Beauchamp. The content has not doubled, and the series are not renewed quickly. It’s becoming less and less interesting. »
Mr. Legault and Ms. Beauchamp are far from being the only ones in their situation. The latest news, according to the 2022 Digital Portrait of Quebec Households, 68% of Quebecers subscribe to at least one online viewing platform. Many, like the couple from Sainte-Thérèse who also subscribe to Netflix, have more than one service. Almost all of them have suffered steep increases in recent years.
These, according to a compilation carried out by La Presse, often far exceed inflation. We have excluded from this calculation the new recent formulas, less expensive but which impose advertising on the viewer.
Netflix, for example, launched in Canada in 2010 at a monthly rate of $7.99. If the bill had kept pace with inflation, the subscription for the basic service would be $10.79 today. Instead, it costs $16.49, or 35% more than the price adjusted for inflation.
The prize for this increase greater than inflation goes to Crave. Opened in 2016 to all Canadians, no longer just Bell subscribers, at a monthly cost of $7.99, this service would today be $9.82 if it had kept up with inflation. However, Crave’s “Premium” plan, without advertising, costs $19.99 in 2023, a “premium” of 51%.
Five of the seven services analyzed find themselves in this situation, to varying degrees. Only ICI Tou.tv EXTRA has escaped the trend by maintaining the same price of $6.99 since its launch in 2014. Prime Video, an atypical platform since it is offered as part of a package of services, has practically kept up with inflation , surpassing it by just 2%.
Himself a big consumer of these platforms, keeping Netflix and Prime Video at all times and alternating between Apple TV and Disney, the techno columnist Bruno Guglielminetti has suffered these price shocks. “It affects our wallet, each increase hurts: few customers are satisfied with just one service,” summarizes the host of the digital news podcast My Notebook.
Essentially, the platforms justified the increases by the growing cost of producing television content, a very real phenomenon. These in-house productions are now essential with the appearance of numerous competitors on Netflix.
In addition, as with any cloud computing company, streaming platforms must juggle an increase in demand for data, particularly with the widespread use of 4K, combined with the soaring cost of servers. An indication provided last spring by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC): the average Canadian household today consumes 396 gigabytes of data per month. This is double the consumption of 2019.
“The platforms have a lot of costs to absorb, and the latest collective agreement for screenwriters and actors in Hollywood will result in even greater costs,” believes Mr. Guglielminetti. The quickest way for them to seek financing is to increase their prices. »
Regarding Apple TV, another explanation emerges. Since 2020, the combined Apple One service has been actively promoted, which offers a music catalog of 70 million songs, 180 games and 50 GB of storage for $10 more. “They want to favor those who take the full package, there is a little strategy behind that to force people to consume,” believes Denis Legault.
