Nestled into Amazon’s fourth-quarter results is news that the company plans to increase the cost of Amazon Prime for subscribers in the United States. It’s the first time the price has been increased in four years and it will see the annual membership fee rise from $119 to $139 while the monthly fee will jump from $12.99 to $14.99.
The e-commerce giant said that the new price regime will come into effect on February 18, 2022, for new customers while current Prime members will pay the new amount after March 25, 2022, on the date of their next renewal.
If you asked Amazon why it has put the prices up, aside from things like inflation, it would say that the service now offers more content. Since 2018, Prime Video alone now features triple the amount of Amazon Originals with new series and movies such as The Boys, The Wheel of Time, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, The Underground Railroad, Sound of Metal, Coming 2 America, The Tomorrow War, and Being the Ricardos. A whole host of other Prime services have been improved since 2018 too.
In the fourth quarter, Amazon reported that its subscription services, which includes Amazon Prime earned the company over $8 billion compared to the little over $7 billion it earned in the same quarter the year before. The increase in fees will no doubt help it to grow this figure further, keeping shareholders happy.