I can’t stand all the freevee crap they have been forcing down our throats too. They pack a record amount of commercials into those movies and it’s all clunky when you pause and go back, or need to fast forward or rewind. Just wish there was better ways to get rid of the freevee crap, but if 2.99 gets rid of those ads too, I might be inclined to upgrade. I know it wil just be the stuff that has no ads now tho.
Because profits tend to fall over time [1] so to keep profits the same (let alone increasing) revenue have to go up and/or costs have to go down. More evenue can be higher prices, more subscribers, etc. Lowering costs can mean paying less in licensing, paying people less, employing less people, etc.
This was one of Marx's key observations of the inherent contradictions in capitalism.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
What we see here is prices rising, in a landscape which is becoming more competitive.
As for the streaming space, it honestly isn't that competitive. There aren't that many players. If anything, what we're seeing here is price leadership (which is price fixing and collusion but, you know, legal) Netflix raises their prices $2/month and weirdly Hulu, Disney and Max all follow suit. Strange how that works.
We saw the exact same thing with cable: bundling channels to maintain profits, channels charging more, increasing prices to counter losing customers, etc. And why were the channel prices going up to the cable TV providers? The exact same set of reasons relating to falling profits.
There's something to be said about the idea of not allowing content companies to own distribution...