Following a ten-year period where you had to subscribe to 18 different streaming services to see all the shows you wanted, we’ve entered a new period of bundling. Disney+ and Hulu, which were already both owned by Disney, are working to combine their two streaming services into a single offering. Now, Max, Warner Bros’ streaming offering, has joined with Disney+ and Hulu to offer a single bundle that should come at a discounted price.
As of July 25, U.S. residents can subscribe to Max, Disney+, and Hulu for $16.99/mo. with ads or for $29.99 with no ads. That’s a savings of more than 30% whether you subscribe to the ad-supported version or the ad-free version over subscribing to each of the services separately.
Disney and Warner Bros., who are competitors in most areas of entertainment, announced the plan to bundle their streaming services in early May. The bundle is currently only available in the U.S., and subscribers will have access to the entire range of content available across all three services when they subscribe.
The goal behind this bundle is to reduce the level of cancellations for each service, as evidence suggests that consumers who get a bundled discount are more likely to continue paying. In reality, though, it seems like the first step toward a model in which customers pay for a bunch of services at once, as they once did with their cable packages. Streaming was supposed to move us toward a bright future, but it has in recent years introduced ad-supported tiers, and bundled services together to make them cheaper and more convenient for the end user. What is old is new again.
