Hulu Now Has 1.5 Million Paying Subscribers

Hulu, the U.S. video streaming service that has a large archive of TV shows and movies, is doing rather well. Their premium service, Hulu Plus, has 1.5 Million subscribers which is way up from their last numbers of 300,000 a year prior.

Compared to Netflix, Hulu has a long way to go as the company has nearly 24 Million subscribers. Still, a 1.2 Million increase in one year is pretty good for a relatively new service. Makes one wonder if a part of the increase is from Netflix’s screw up last year with trying to split their service and charge customers more.

Via Yahoo News:

“Revenue also grew substantially, Kilar blogged. Hulu grew its business 60 percent from 2010 to approximately $420 million in revenue. That is impressive growth, but it falls just short of Hulu’s projections. Kilar had previously stated that the company was on track to “approach” $500 million in revenue.”

While it does fall short, the impressive growth shows that the service is hitting a sweet spot with users. And to think that they were consider shutting down the service before Hulu Plus took off in popularity.

For them to do well in 2012, they need to continue to build out their premium service. Ads for free users are great, but that’s not where the real money is at.

“The subscription part of the business is incredibly important to Hulu’s future and is key to nudging the still growing company into the black. Kilar said in the post that he expects the subscription services to account for more than half of Hulu’s overall business in 2012.”