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HBO Max is now not providing one-week free trials to new subscribers, the newest streaming-video service to take away its try-it-out-free interval at the same time as competitors for subscribers intensifies. The transfer comes three weeks before its mega-budget film Wonder Woman 1984 is about to stream on the service the identical day it debuts in theaters within the US.
HBO Max confirmed Thursday that the free-trial provide has ended, noting that it is following the lead of Netflix and Disney Plus. “We frequently update and iterate our offers to provide flexible ways for potential subscribers to access all that HBO Max has to offer,” a spokesman stated Thursday. HBO Max is owned by telecom large AT&T, via its WarnerMedia leisure unit — which additionally operates Warner Bros., the studio behind Wonder Woman.
Both Netflix, the most important subscription video service by subscribers, and Disney Plus eradicated their free-trial affords earlier this 12 months.
And Disney Plus made its change a few weeks before it launched Hamilton, its extremely anticipated recording of the Broadway smash. Hamilton sparked a wave of recent Disney Plus members: Disney had been including about one million subscribers a month main as much as Hamilton’s launch — but it surely added three million new members within the roughly 5 weeks following Hamilton’s launch. Without a free trial, all these members needed to pay for at the very least one month of the service, which is $7 a month.
Wonder Woman 1984 is certain to be one of many strongest drivers of curiosity in HBO Max because the service’s launch in late May. HBO Max, which is $15 a month, has been grappling with a bumpy rollout to date: Even although tens of millions of individuals can improve to Max at no further price as a result of they already subscribe to common HBO, solely a fraction of these folks have bothered downloading and signing up for the app. In HBO Max’s first 5 months, it is ramped as much as 8.6 million accounts, each direct app subscribers and free upgrades from common HBO. Disney Plus, by comparability, surpassed 50 million subscribers in its first 5 months. (Disney Plus has since grown to 73.7 million.)
HBO Max is yet one more splashy new service within the so-called streaming wars, a interval during the last 12 months when media giants and tech titans have launched a raft of recent streaming choices. These battles — pitting rookies like Apple TV Plus, HBO Max, Disney Plus and NBCUniversal’s Peacock in opposition to heavyweights like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video — have spurred large firms to pour billions of {dollars} into their ambition to form the way forward for tv.
But for you, this intensifying competitors additionally impacts what number of providers you have to use — and infrequently pay for — to observe your favourite exhibits and films on-line.
(This story has not been edited by Newslivenation employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)