The bad news has arrived, and the cost of a year's worth of Amazon Prime has increased. The development that no one was looking forward to but was almost certainly due has indeed come to pass, and now those users who want access to Amazon's streaming video library—along with a variety of other perks--will soon have to pay extra to get in on the action.

The good news, however, is that there's a bit of a lag between the announcement and the effective date. Those who have thought about getting in will be able to do so at the less expensive rate—currently $79 for a year—for about another week before the price hike takes effect. Once it does, the price for a year's access will jump an additional $20, making a year of the service $99 instead of $79. This reportedly represents the first such price hike in the nine years that the service has been in operation.

Meanwhile, students with Amazon Prime memberships will be billed at the $49 rate, and those with “Prime Fresh” memberships will continue in at $299 for the year, along with access to same-day delivery of orders on things like fresh groceries.

This move actually elevates Amazon Prime to slightly higher than Netflix, which runs about $96 for a year given a $7.99 a month cost for streaming access. But it's worth pointing out that Netflix doesn't come with free two-day shipping on orders from Amazon, as well as access to the Kindle lending library of books, key points that will likely help Amazon in the midst of this price hike.

This isn't the first Amazon price hike we've seen lately. In late October of 2013, Amazon was spotted bumping up the price required to get access to free shipping from $25 to $35, and there were at least some stirrings of a price hike to come on Amazon Prime as the cost of fuel and super-fast two-day shipping started to catch up with the company. Though there were some early stirrings that suggested that users would cancel accounts in droves should a price hike take place, the current word on Twitter (News - Alert) is suggesting that many users are thinking twice about quitting, and will in fact stick around even at the slightly elevated pricing. Indeed, “slightly elevated” is a good description: the price is going from around $6.58 a month to $8.25 a month. This isn't a price that most are likely to notice, and given the extra goodies that Amazon will toss in like the lending library, it's a smart idea overall. If Amazon Prime Air can ever get started, the times will likely be cut further, though some extra cash will have to get involved for the care and feeding of the aerial drones involved.

Prices on things go up, sadly, and that means price hikes are largely inevitable. If Amazon can keep the price hikes to once a decade or so, most are likely to stay happy with Amazon's level of value. It's comparable to most in the field and even offers quite a bit more, so Amazon should be able to carry on with little loss in the customer base and more likely to come.