Curiosity Stream Plans to Raise Subscription Prices to Supplement Growing Content Library
Clint Stinchcomb, President, CEO & Director of CuriosityStream Inc., announced during its recent Q4 earnings call that the company had intentions to raise its subscription prices sometime this year. However, according to Stinchcomb, the service has “yet to finalize the exact magnitude or timing of its planned subscription pricing change.”
Curiosity Stream is an on-demand streaming service with a focus on documentaries and series on science, space, technology, nature, history, health, and more. Curiosity is currently available in over 175 countries and the SVOD model offers both standard and premium pricing. The standard monthly plan is $2.99/month ($19.99 per year) and the premium plans allow 4K streaming and is priced at $9.99/month ($69.99 annually). The company frequently discounts it to $11.99-14.99 per year throughout the year.
The higher premium tier, known as the “Smart Bundle,” was launched in December 2021 and offers a bundle of six streaming services (Tastemade+, SommTV, Topic, One Day University, Nebula). The bundle has apparently “gained significant traction as we leverage bundle economics in an audience-first approach,” according to the CEO.
For the fourth quarter, Curiosity Stream had year-over-year revenue growth of 140% and reached approximately 23 million global subscribers. Curiosity Stream’s subscriber count doubled over that of 2020.
“We believe we are nearing the right time to better align the value we bring to our subscribers with the price of our subscription plan,’ Stinchcomb said. “Even if our most popular annual plan pricing were to increase to $30 per year, it would still represent tremendous value.”
At the beginning of 2022, the streaming service expanded its original series catalog with new titles including “Evolve,” a six-part series about biomimicry; “Titans: The Rise of Wall Street,” a documentary on the history of the American finance industry; and others.
“The content slate we are premiering this year advances our mission to satisfy the curiosity of those who want to know more,” Stinchcomb said. “We believe our content war chest today with well over 10,000 title choices that includes over 5000 premium video selections represents a robust ‘critical-mass’ for our streaming service.”
The company is also delving into the realm of free ad-supported TV. Partnering with LG, it launched Curiosity Now earlier this week. It is available as channel #277 on LG Channels on all LG Smart TV 4.0 and newer models. The channel will have programming such as “Ancient Engineering,” “The Secret Lives of Big Cats” “Myths & Monsters,” and more.
“While legacy linear TV channels and other streaming services chase the next big hit to retain their subscribers, we focus on delivering the unique content proposition and engaging user experience that makes our subscribers never want to leave,” Stinchcomb noted. “With all the noise in the market and the media about the streaming wars, we continue to believe our unique factual streaming service is complementary to not competitive with general entertainment streaming services.”
Curiosity Stream
Curiosity Stream is a subscription streaming service that offers 1,800+ documentaries and series on science, space, technology, nature, history, health, and more. The service was created by the Discovery Channel founder, John Hendricks, in 2015.