Cord-cutting services are starting to look a lot more like the services they replaced when it comes to price.
After price bumps in the past couple of months hit Hulu Live and DirecTV NOW, YouTube TV is now also seeing a pretty substantial $10-$15 monthly price hike for users, though the new pricing will come with some new content thanks to a Google partnership with Discovery.
Early subscribers paying $35 per month and more recent subscribers paying $40 per month will soon be paying $50 every month for the TV service that lets you watch live and on-demand shows across multiple devices.
The eight new channels coming on board with the deal are Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Travel Channel and MotorTrend. The Oprah Winfrey Network will also be arriving later this year, which is notable given the media mogul’s recent partnership with Apple.
Last year, YouTube TV added a number of channels, including TNT, Adult Swim, TBS, CNN and Cartoon Network, and tacked on an extra $5 to the service, though existing members kept their $35 per month pricing. That’s not the case this time; the company will make the $49.99 per month price standard for all users, though it won’t go into effect for existing users until their next billing cycle after May 13. Subscribers who pay through Apple will have to fork over $54.99.
What if you don’t want to pay extra money for all of these new channels that you might not even watch? Well then, I guess you’re left with one of your original complaints from before these cord-cutting services first launched.
While there are obviously plenty of things to keep users from Comcast, the company is kind of laying out an unattractive bid for future customers if they’re just going to uniformly jack up the price every time they reach a worthwhile deal with a major network. Interestingly, Google will be letting users add EPIX as an à la carte premium package, but they won’t be giving users the options to do this with the other new channels.