Amazon is dropping the requirement to sign up for a year to access its Prime membership services. The retailer is adding new subscription options tonight, reports CNN, that will price Prime at $10.99 a month and, for the first time, offer Prime Video as a standalone service at $8.99 a month.
The regular price of $99 for a year of Prime, which includes the Prime Video content as well as free shipping and services including music and photo backup, isn't going away — and it's still the better deal. Prime Video alone would cost $107.88 a year if you chose to subscribe to that on a monthly basis, while the full Prime service would shoot up to $131.88.
Amazon tested monthly Prime subscriptions to a limited extent in 2012 before ending the experiment, which was widely seen as an effort to square up to Netflix and Hulu. As it happens, the new $8.99 Prime Video pricing comes a couple of weeks before longtime Netflix subscribers will see their subscription fee rise to $9.99.