One Of The Biggest Streaming Services No Longer Lets You Sign Up For Free
Peacock has removed its free tier and now offers only $5 and $10 tier prices.
It’s a crowded field of streaming services, and the companies behind them are always looking for creative ways to bring in new customers. In order to stand out from the competition, the NBC streaming app Peacock had previously allowed customers to sign up for a free tier of service that was entirely supported by ads and limited some of the content that users could access. Now, Deadline reports that NBC has ditched the free option altogether, and the lowest price that anyone can subscribe to Peacock for is now $5.
The $5 option to sign up for Peacock is nothing new, but under the old system, this was effectively the “middle” option between the free basic service and the $10 premium service. Now, when users go to register for the streaming platform, they only have the option of signing up for either the $5 service or the $10 service. While this represents a major potential change for those who use the program, this action is perfectly in line with how NBC has treated its streaming platform in the last year or so.
When Peacock launched in 2020, NBC really emphasized the free tier, and the company prominently used marketing materials to advertise that the new service was “free as a bird.” However, streaming platforms just aren’t that profitable when users have the option of paying nothing at all, and this was true even when NBC dangled special content like extended episodes of The Office as an incentive to switch to one of the paid tiers. It didn’t take long for NBC to stop emphasizing the free tier in their marketing, as the company encouraged more of its customers to become paid Peacock users.
However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the basic tier of Peacock as a failure on the company’s part. Offering a free service was intended to help them one-up the competition, providing customers with the kind of free streaming content that they couldn’t normally find outside of something like Tubi. Along the way, that free tier helped Peacock to pass 20 million subscribers, which is quite impressive for a streamer that launched just a few years ago.
So, what do you actually get now on the different tiers of Peacock? The short answer is that for $4.99 a month, you get access to all the content (including live sports, current NBC and Bravo programming, and over 50 channels that are always on), but you still have to sit through ads. At the $9.99 tier, you get all the content without the ads, and you also get your live NBC news channel as well as the ability to download certain titles and watch them on the go.
Ultimately, the future of NBC’s Peacock remains very uncertain. While the company has managed to double its subscribers in the last year (an impressive accomplishment), it is also facing losses projected to reach $3 billion this year. Only time will tell if they become an enduring streaming powerhouse or if the growing legion of The Office fans will have to jump platforms yet again to binge-watch their favorite show.
