The day we all feared has come. Amazon has announced that the price of Prime will soon cost $99 a year. Starting in seven days, the cost for existing members to renew will increase by $20 from $79.99.
Amazon Student members will pay $49. The Prime Fresh membership fee will remain unchanged at $299.
Exsiting members can expect to see the new price when their membership is set to renew. Amazon’s FAQ page about the price change states that it has sent an email to each subscriber indicating when this will happen. Hopefully you just renewed your Prime membership.
Amazon hinted at the possibility of a price increase in late January as it reported disappointing earnings for the previous holiday quarter.
Amazon is in a tough spot. After being the street’s darling for so many years, the company’s stock took a tumble thanks to a sub-par performance this holiday season. Analysts expected Amazon to report revenue of $26.06 billion, and earn $0.66 per share. Put another way, in a quarter of strong GDP growth, Amazon managed to miss expectations on both its top and bottom lines.
Amazon’s stock has yet to recover.
Since its launch nine years ago, Prime has become more than just a free shipping service. Amazon also bundles its video streaming and Kindle libraries with the subscription. As a long time subscriber, this price hike puts a frown on my face, but I still plan on resubscribing re-subscribe. I simply hate going to the store.
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Matt Burns is a longtime technology journalist, now Editorial Director at Insight Media Group and formerly Managing Editor at TechCrunch. At Insight Media Group, he guides coverage and contributor programs across fast-growing tech publications. Before that, he spent 15+ years at TechCrunch, rising from contributor to Managing Editor, helping scale the newsroom and program Disrupt’s stages and TechCrunch’s other events. Earlier, he also wrote for Engadget. Matt co-founded the Resilience Conference, an event series at the intersection of defense, security, and startup innovation. There he builds agendas, hosts sessions, and launched “Launch @ Resilience,” a showcase for early-stage teams building nation-defending technology. Across roles, he’s reported on and moderated conversations in AI, mobility, frontier tech, and the hard problems technology companies face. He’s interviewed world leaders, top investors, startup founders, and public-company CEOs. Lifelong Michiganian with plenty of Silicon Valley miles, he brings Midwest empathy and an editor’s eye. Offstage, he works with teams to sharpen narrative and validate go-to-market plans, and, when possible, camping along Lake Michigan.