Snippet: Disney+ Streaming Service Starting in November for $7/month ☇
Peter Kafka for Recode:
Now we have them: Disney+ will launch in the US on November 12, for $7 a month. It will have a very large library of old Disney movies and TV shows — crucially, including titles from its Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars catalog — along with new movies and series made exclusively for the streaming service. It won’t have any ads. And it will allow subscribers to download all of that stuff, and watch it offline, whenever they want.
For comparison: A standard Netflix subscription now costs $13 a month. […]
Disney’s event still left several unknowns, some of which won’t get answered anytime soon: For instance, does Disney plan on distributing its service via big internet platforms like Amazon and Apple, who are now officially frenemies with the media giant?
And how will Disney bundle its suite of streaming services, which also include Hulu and an ESPN spin-off? (Kevin Mayer, the Disney executive in charge of all of Disney’s streaming services, said the company would likely bundle them in some way, but didn’t say more.) […]
Oh, and one more thing: Disney+ will also feature shows and movies that previously belonged to 21st Century Fox, which Disney mostly absorbed this year. That means the service will also be the place to watch The Simpsons, for starters.
I think for many this will be an insta-susbcribe. The service will have a discounted rate if you subscribe for a year at a time ($69.99/year). Between the vast back catalogs of Disney (with Pixar and Marvel) and 21st Century Fox, there’s immediately a vast library of proven content, not to mention the new content that will be created explicitly for the service. The price also puts it in a place that it probably won’t be the first thing canceled if people decide to cut back on streaming options. Furthermore, if there is some sort of bundle discount, Disney+, ESPN+, and the lower tier of Hulu would end up coming out cheaper than Netflix.
Seeing how Disney CEO Bob Iger sits on Apple’s board and Hulu was featured prominently at Apple’s event last month, I suspect Disney and Apple will continue to have a good relationship, despite their streaming services competing for your time.