Amazon Hikes the Price of Prime Membership
by EG
Amazon has been spending lots of money to produce original content such as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and now Amazon Prime subscribers are going to start paying for it. Amazon announced this week that it will be boosting the annual cost of Prime membership fro $99 to $119. That's a relatively massive 20% increase, but even with the higher subscription price, the service still costs less than most Netflix subscriptions.
Amazon is increasing the price of Prime.
The e-commerce giant will start charging $20 more for its membership program, which includes perks such as two-day shipping and access to video and music streaming libraries. The new price, $119, will go into effect May 11 for new subscribers, CFO Brian Olsavsky announced Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings call with investors. Existing members will be charged the higher price beginning June 16 as their accounts become eligible for renewal.
"The value of Prime to customers has never been greater," Olsavsky told investors. "And the cost is also high, as we pointed out especially with shipping options and digital benefits, we continue to see rises in costs."
Amazon has charged $99 annually for Prime since 2014, when it upped the price from $79 a year. (It increased the price of its monthly Prime membership in January from $11 to $13, or the equivalent of $156 a year.)
In the years since Prime's last major price hike, Amazon has invested heavily to grow the benefits of the subscription, such as spending $4.5 billion on content last year — including producing such originals as Transparent and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and licensing programming from other networks.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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