Hulu price increase and lost subscribers

We posted recently about the latest Hulu and Disney price increases. However, we didn't get too deep into the other news about the services. It turns out that Hulu lost a lot of subscribers last quarter.

A report this week said that Hulu lost 100,000 subscribers to its live streaming service. Not the $7/month service I use, but the expensive Hulu+Live TV service that is going up from $70/month to $77/month.

Maybe they figure they need to increase the price 10% to offset a 2-3% drop in subscribers. Let's do the math real quick.

They had 4.4 million subscribers, and lost 100,000, meaning they lost $7-million in subscriptions. If they go up $7 and keep 4.3 million, that's an increase of over 30-million. That's a net gain of over $23-million. They could afford to lose another 300,000 subscribers at the higher price and not lose income.

It's all about the money, isn't it? Of course it is. It's always about money. They have to find a way to keep the money coming in as subscribers continue to leave:

The media giant said on Wednesday that Hulu lost 100,000 live TV subscribers to a total of 4.3 million. The total number of streaming video on demand customers rose by 300,000 to 44 million.

It’s the second quarter in a row in which Hulu lost that amount of subscribers.

My Streaming Life doesn't include Hulu+Live TV, or any live streaming service. I use standard Hulu, about 3-5 months out of the year. I can get by just fine without paying an outrageous amount of money for a service I wouldn't watch.