Apple is raising the price of its streaming service Apple TV and will adjust the cost of its Apple One bundle accordingly, the company disclosed on Friday.
Starting today, the cost of Apple TV is going up to $15 per month for new subscribers, with existing customers seeing the new price reflected when their subscription renews between now and the end of September.
The annual price of Apple TV is also going up, with streamers expected to shell out $120 per year, up from the prior price of $90 per year.
It is the fourth time that Apple has raised the price of its streaming service in four years — Apple used to offer a generous free trial of Apple TV to customers who purchased its hardware, but those extended trials have been reduced to just one or three months, depending on what’s bought.
Apple One, the company’s service bundle, used to be a good way to avoid those price increases, but Apple is raising the cost of that package, too: Now, streamers who bundle Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and the entry-level premium tier of iCloud will have to pay $22 per month, up from $20 per month — meaning the Apple TV price increase is coming for bundlers, too.
Apple says it offers more than 300 original TV series, but few have generated mainstream appeal — “Ted Lasso,” a show produced by NBC Universal, is perhaps the biggest hit for the service, with shows like “Severance,” “Pluribus” and “Silo” also generating buzz.
The real genesis for Apple TV’s price hikes appears to be the company’s concerted efforts in onboarding more live sports — it offers games and events from Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, Formula 1 and other sports stakeholders — though some have noted the audience for those events has dipped considerably since Apple took on those rights.
