If you're a Netflix customer, there's a good chance your subscription will be changing soon. The company announced yesterday in a letter to shareholders that its most popular plan--$11.99 a month for no ads -- is going away for good.
US customers haven't been able to sign up for the plan since last summer, instead having to choose a more expensive plan if they wanted to go commercial-free. But now existing subscribers are getting cut off too.
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The changes will start, the company said, in the UK and Canada, and would happen sometime in the second quarter. Netflix didn't say what countries would be next, or when they would be cut off, only that it would be "taking it from there."
When the changes take effect, the only remaining plans are the ad-supported$7/month plan , the standard ad-free plan at$15.50/month , and premium, which adds 4K streaming, spatial audio, offline content, and two extra members outside the household, for$23 a month .
So for customers currently on the basic$11.99 a month plan, this is essentially a 30% price increase.
If you want to add an extra person outside the house to any of those plans, it's another$8.
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The move comes as Netflix subscriptions are soaring in the wake of last year's password-sharing crackdown. While many people predicted this would be the beginning of the end for the streaming giant, new subscriptions soared.
While streaming without ads has been a staple of the service for many years, it seems people are actually becoming okay with sitting through some advertisements, as the company notes that the ad-supported plan accounts for 40% of all new Netflix signups and the number of subscribers for ad-supported tiers grew nearly 70% quarter-over-quarter.