macinscott

Disney expects to take massive loses for the first several years establishing a foothold in the streaming marketplace. In fact, Disney already forecast this on their second-quarter earnings call when they told investors that its direct-to-consumer businesses would lose $460 million in the third quarter. Disney has a stated goal of reaching profitability on 2024 with 40-60 million subscribers.  

For this reason, I don't believe Disney will increase prices for several years. They are playing the long game with the launch of Disney+, and the bundle package which includes Hulu and ESPN+. Disney wants to be the predominant streaming service and clearly has Netflix in its sights.

What that means for Apple and anyone else entering the space is they also have to be willing to lose massive amounts of money to gain traction, and be one of the top 3 streaming services. Because even with cord-cutting, consumers will limit the number of services they subscribe to. Either that, or they'll rotate subscriptions and binge watch and repeat.

Big mistake by Spotify that will only quicken their demise. They do not have the in-house talent nor the deep pockets to compete with the other tech companies in this space.