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By Michaela Gordoni
New data shows that digital app costs are up 19% compared to last year.
“We’ve kind of gotten used to seeing notes from these subscription services saying we’re raising our costs by $1, $2, $3, which doesn’t seem like very much,” Matt Schulz, a chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree, told CBS News. “But when you factor in that some people subscribe to 10 or 15 different things, a couple of dollars a month extra on all of those adds up to real money over the course of the year.”
About one-third of Americans have caught on and cancelled at least one subscription in the last six months.
The average American pays for 4.5 services at about $84 per month or $1,008 annually. Disney+ ad-free users pay $18.99 per month, which is more than twice what they paid six years ago. And Apple TV’s standard plan increased 108% from 2020.
Related: Consumers Fed Up with Streaming Service Price Hikes
Anime streaming service Crunchyroll just announced a $2 price hike across all plans on Feb. 2 after it just shut down its free ad tier in January. The cheapest plan now costs $10 per month. The highest is $18 per month, CNET reported.
In January, Paramount+ increased all plans by $1. Its lowest plan, the ad-supported Essential plan, is now $8.99 a month, and its ad-free premium plan is $13.99 a month, Tom’s Guide reported.
There is a little good news though. Apple iCloud storage is down 20% since 202, and Apple Music is down by 12%, CBS News said.
Meta is also chasing the subscription scheme, as it plans to test subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. The subscriptions offers users exclusive features that include AI capabilities and tools meant to unlock more creativity and productivity, Tech Crunch reported. Each service will have its own exclusive features.
Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi says some features on Instagram will be the option to see a list of people who don’t follow you back, secret viewing of stories and unlimited audience lists.
“Most platforms are optimized to keep people scrolling longer, not feeling better about how they spent their time,” said Mike Ford, CEO of the marketing company Skydeo. “A subscription becomes compelling when it flips that incentive, when it helps users set boundaries, make fewer decisions and walk away feeling like the platform worked for them instead of on them,” which could be what Meta plans to do.
This comes with the recent news that people in the UK were notified of a £2.99 monthly subscription to access ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram last month.
Meta says it will start to roll out the subscriptions in the coming months.
Read Next: Streaming Price Hikes Force Many Americans to Halt Subscriptions
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