Amazon announced a new pricing for its yearly Prime subscription in the United States. The new price is $119, a twenty percent increase over the previous tag ($99). The changes come into effect starting May 11th for newbies looking forward to investing inia yearly Prime subscription. Whereas, already registered customers will see the new price tag starting June 16th.
The news comes right after the company announced that it now has more than 100 million Prime customers worldwide. It was Amazon’s first announcement regarding the subscription service’s performance. It’s a welcome move, considering how the company preferred to keep mum about its numbers in the past.
Amazon Prime subscription includes a bunch of services – free shipping, one day delivery, Prime Video, Prime Music and access to exclusive Prime deals. Also, Prime customers get early access to new Amazon exclusive products while non-Prime customers have to hang tight.
Amazon Prime Video and Prime Music are two major pillars of the subscription service. They are turning out to be hugely popular because of the mere price Amazon asks for. Comparatively, Netflix costs $120 per year ($10 per month for HD) which perfectly falls in line with Amazon’s new pricing. However, Netflix doesn’t bundle music, free shipping, one-delivery and access to crazy deals.
Netflix, hold-the-door (Hodor)
The new price can be justified as the company is trying its best to bundle best of the best for as low as possible. According to (recent) leaked internal documents, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is planning a Game of Thrones esque TV show with an extremely high budget which later turned into a series based on The Lord of the Rings films. Also, according to an Amazon executive, the price bump aligns with the expensive shipping rates.
The new price is applicable only to the yearly Prime subscribers, aligning it with the recent price bump to the monthly subscription. Amazon increased the price of its monthly subscription from $10.99 to $12.99, earlier this year.