Streaming has taken over the TV industry, but with Disney+ announcing a new approach, the industry could be in for another massive shake up. With the rise of platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV, and, of course, Disney+, it has never been easier to sit down and binge a series, handpicking something that suits your taste, and access entire shows all from the comfort of your home.
Of course, to benefit from this privilege, people need to pay to subscribe to whichever service is carrying their favorite shows, which has led to a lot of competition in the streaming space. However, not all streamers approach sharing content in the same way. For example, Disney+ is a platform that contains a vast library that becomes accessible for any subscriber, with higher tiers available to avoid ads and gain a handful of other benefits.
Meanwhile, other platforms, such as Prime Video and Apple TV, also display a range of other programs alongside their included content, which customers would need to pay an additional fee to access. On the opposite end of that format, YouTube provides audiences with primarily free content and a small range of exclusive content that creators share for an additional fee or a subscription fee to get rid of ads. And it seems as though YouTube’s format has got Disney+ rethinking its approach.
Disney+’s Free Streaming Plan Would Be a Game-Changer For Major Platforms
While YouTube is not typically mentioned alongside platforms like Apple TV, Prime Video, Disney+, and others, it does operate on a remarkably similar basis. Visitors to the platform follow channels they enjoy, and then they tune in to watch the content as it’s released. But of course, these channels are operated by individual creators or independent teams that operate with minimal oversight from YouTube as long as they stay within a set of guidelines.
Thanks to this unique approach, YouTube is dominating the market share when stacked up against the competition, with reports of the platform having more than 2.58 billion unique accounts, and 122 million users logging in to use the site daily. Meanwhile, the biggest streaming platform may have 325 million paying subscribers, but the views that YouTube racks up and the total time spent on the platform dwarf the competition.
In a recent Disney town hall meeting, their product and tech chief spoke about introducing a free tier, following YouTube’s example, and making it easier than ever for people to make use of the service instead of charging them before granting access. As the third-biggest streamer, behind Netflix and Prime Video, Disney+ choosing to create a free tier would likely lead to other smaller streamers adopting the same option, but also push the biggest platforms to follow suit.
Why A Free Tier Plan Could Be A Genius Move For Disney+
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YouTube started life as a free video-sharing service, and while it developed a handful of projects as full-scale productions as part of the YouTube Red series of shows, which also included Cobra Kai, the platform has always had an accessible free tier, offering paid subscriptions to enhance the service and grant additional access. Disney+ followed a different track early on.
With a massive catalog of popular TV shows and films, Disney created its streaming platform as a way to rival other platforms and avoid relying on other platforms to showcase their projects. So introducing a free tier could seem somewhat counterintuitive, but it could actually be the key to making their platform significantly more popular.
Disney+ could create a free tier that allows users to sign up and access a select range of shows and films, whether that be first episodes or seasons of a show, or a set of classic movies, while keeping the projects with the biggest buzz as an exclusive benefit for paying members. In this way, they can still run ads on the free content, generating an income from even the non-paying users, while still ensuring they come to the platform.
Beyond that, they could change out free-to-watch projects on a regular basis, potentially to tie in with anniversaries and celebrations of a show or movie. There are a number of other ways that Disney+ could make the most of a free tier of membership, but ultimately, it would also create a huge shake-up in the streaming space and could trigger a wave of similar changes across other streaming services.
