Hulu has issued a number of key prices changes, just a week after the leader in the subscription streaming market, Netflix, also announced price increases.
Notably, the prices of the service’s stand-alone subscription video-on-demand services (SVOD) are not going up in price. In fact, they’re going down, with the core SVOD platform, which includes commercials, reduced from $7.99 to $5.99 a month.
However, bundles that include Hulu’s virtual pay-TV platform are increasing in price.
Related: Hulu Letting Subscribers Know About Price Changes
Hulu+ Live TV, which includes more than 60 live channels in addition to access with commercials to its entire VOD library, is going up $5 to $44.99 a month. The version of that bundle with no ads is also going up $5 to $50.99 a month.
The pricing changes will take effect in late February.
An individual with knowledge of the company’s pricing strategy said Hulu believes it can goose SVOD subscriptions with the price reduction, given the performance of previous $5.99 promotions on the core platform.
Hulu is decreasing the price on its basic SVOD service just as market leader Netflix announced across-the-board monthly service spikes.
The $5 price increase on virtual MVPD service follows very similar moves last year by most competitors in the headed vMVPD category.
