Netflix announced its first price bump in North America since October 2020, which is a tough break for whoever's Netflix account you're using.

The details for US customers:

• The basic plan is going up by $1 to $9.99/month.
• The standard plan (the company’s most popular) is being raised by $1.50 to $15.49.
• The premium plan is increasing by $2 to $19.99.

The price hikes will roll out to new subscribers immediately, while existing subscribers will be notified 30 days before they have to fork over the higher monthly rate.

Netflix’s strategy

Developing high-quality programming is expensive—for the amount they paid the Don't Look Up cast, they could have blasted the dang comet and saved the planet.

And with subscriber growth slowing in North America, the company thinks the best approach for filling its content piggy bank is to squeeze some more quarters out of its existing customers.

• Netflix had earmarked $17 billion to spend on original and acquired content in 2021, and analysts expect the company’s content budget has only grown more this year.

With a stream of recent hits like Red Notice and Squid Game, and much-hyped, upcoming sports documentaries on the PGA and tennis, Netflix thinks it’s providing enough value to subscribers to raise prices and not trigger a mass exodus to the competition. Investors agreed, sending Netflix shares higher after the announcement.

• Here’s how bullish Netflix is on its pricing power: For the first time ever, its standard plan ($15.49) is now more expensive than HBO Max’s ($15/month).

Looking ahead…Netflix will likely elaborate on its pricing decision when it reports its Q4 earnings next Thursday. Analysts expect the company to have added 8.5 million new signups to its existing global total of 213.6 million.—NF

Access to a cramped workout room and unlimited Cheez-Its are no longer the pinnacle of workplace perks: Major companies like Google, JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Morgan Stanley are now laying out robust free Covid testing options for employees.

While some employers are beefing up testing capacity to bring staff back into physical offices safely, others are offering remote employees highly coveted at-home tests as a wellness benefit.

• Google, which signed a deal with the same company that provides testing for the NBA, will cover the cost of special rapid tests that retail for a total of $2,161 per person for all full-time employees.
• Bankers at Morgan Stanley are allowed four free BinaxNOW tests every two weeks, which retail for roughly $40.

While office suites are flush with tests, classrooms…aren’t. Schools attempting to return to in-person instruction have faced frustrating testing scenarios, like hours-long wait times and shipments of expired tests. Students in NYC, Michigan, Boston, and Chicago walked out this week over insufficient Covid precautions, including a lack of testing.

Looking ahead…the Biden administration said US households can order up to four free at-home Covid tests from the website COVIDTests.gov starting next Wednesday. This ain’t White House Prime, though: Shipping will likely take 7–12 days.—MM

Many public health experts think Spotify’s aura is “flashing red siren irresponsible.” 270 US doctors, scientists, health care workers, and professors wrote an open letter to Spotify, criticizing the streaming service for allowing its biggest star, Joe Rogan, to spread Covid misinformation on his ultra-popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

The letter references a specific episode with virologist Dr. Robert Malone, who falsely told Rogan’s 11 million listeners that hospitals are financially incentivized to attribute deaths to Covid and that leaders have “hypnotized” the public into believing the vaccines work.

Calling the Malone interview “a sociological issue of devastating proportions,” the health experts urged Spotify to develop a policy to curb the spread of misinformation—since it does not appear to have one currently. YouTube, by comparison, yanked a video of the Malone episode from its platform shortly after it was posted for violating its rules.

Big picture: Spotify locked in the exclusive rights to The Joe Rogan Experience in 2020 with a rumored $100 million deal, and the headaches have been as big as the price tag. At an all-hands staff meeting last September, CEO Daniel Ek reportedly told employees he had held 10 meetings with groups and individuals who want to see Rogan off the platform.—MM

Stat: When Americans aren’t playing pickleball, they’re starting companies. A record 5.4 million new business applications were filled in 2021, the US Census Bureau reported this week. That’s up from the previous record of 4.4 million in 2020, and way higher than in pre-Covid times (3.5 million in 2019).

Quote: “CEOs shouldn’t be crybabies about it. They should just deal with it.”

JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon is playing the world’s smallest violin for the bank executives who complain about paying their employees more due to inflation. Still, those CEOs are probably right to be concerned—banks that reported their earnings yesterday warned that higher costs would eat into profitability, causing their shares to tumble.

Read: Sometimes, life stinks. So this guy invented the nasal ranger. (New York Times)

One last call: We want to help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions. Share your goals with us, and we’ll give you some resources to help achieve them.

Weekend conversation starters:

• Can dogs tell when you’re speaking another language?
• Best TV show promo in history?
• What Finland thinks an American workday is like.
• Wild train heists in LA.
• Should we build another Manhattan?