Subscription Sticker Shock: Streaming Video, Music, Storage, and More (Premium)

You've all seen the news: the prices of the online services we all subscribe to are going up this year. That it's time to scale back is obvious, but the good news is that we have more choices than ever. And that's especially true of streaming video services, which feel like the obvious place to start this discussion.

First, I'll use myself as an example of what not to do: we subscribe to an embarrassing number of streaming video services, in part because we still (partially) support our kids despite them being adults and out of the house. And we usually pay for the most expensive versions of those services when there's a choice, for the same reason.

(Interestingly, in querying the kids about this, I learned that our son Mark is mostly not using the services we pay for and has instead pretty much moved on to splitting the cost of most of this with his roommates, and so it's just our daughter Kelly on most of these plans. Mark still uses our Apple TV+ account, and Kelly uses Hulu, Netflix, and Apple TV+, in that order.)

This is going to change. But first, let me lay out my embarrassment in painful detail. We currently pay for the following streaming video services:

Apple TV+. Semi-unique among the top-tier streaming video services, Apple has not raised prices this year on Apple TV+, which provides original content (TV shows, mostly), a growing collection of live sports events (like two MLB baseball games each Friday night), and more. Also semi-unique to Apple TV+, it's free to share with up to five family members. And it's just $6.99 per month, which makes it a good value.

Disney Bundle Trio Premium. This bundled combines Disney+ (No ads), Hulu (No ads), and ESPN+ (with ads) for $19.99 per month. I'm sure the Star Wars content on Disney+ is what swayed me to upgrade from Hulu (no ads) to this bundle. But we pretty much only watch Hulu, as does our daughter.

Max Legacy Ad-Free. I guess I'm on some grandfathered tier of the former HBO Max, which offers original content (movies and TV series) plus a nice collection legacy HBO and Discovery content, the latter of which includes many TV series from Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV, TLC, and more. Our plan is $15.99 per month, but you can't even see what the details are now. It's been replaced by an Ad-Free plan ($15.99 per month, stream on 2 devices, Full HD resolution, and 30 downloads) and an Ultimate Ad-Free plan ($19.99 per month, stream on 4 devices, 4K Ultra HD resolution, and 100 downloads).

Netflix Premium Ultra HD. Ad-free, download videos on six devices, Ultra HD (4K) video quality where available. Cost: $19.99 per month. (We could also buy "extra member" slots at $7.99 per child per month, but this is one we've gotten out of somehow. Our daughter, in North Carolina, says our Netflix still works for her. Our son, in Rochester, NY, is no longer using our account.)

Prime Video. Amazon's video service is included in its Prime subscription and it's mostly low-qu...