Following the release of its company financial report to shareholders last week, streaming juggernaut Netflix said that it would start cracking down on password sharing in the first quarter of this year.
It will become more difficult to share passwords with persons who are not in the subscriber’s home, and it might cost extra to use a single membership at different locations.
Netflix informed shareholders in a letter on Thursday that it planned to “spread out paid sharing more broadly” later in the first quarter of this year. As a result, you’ll probably have to start paying by the end of March to access Netflix’s content. It originally suggested that there might be a clamp on password sharing in July of last year after experiencing its first decline in subscribers in over a decade — 200,000 members — in the first quarter of 2022, according to the source.
According to Netflix’s annual report to shareholders, “While our terms of use limit use of Netflix to a household, we recognise this is a change for members who share their account more broadly.”
“As we roll out paid sharing, members in many countries will also have the option to pay extra if they want to share Netflix with people they don’t live with. As is the case today, all members will be able to watch while travelling, whether on a TV or mobile device.”
The corporation acknowledged that it anticipated a bad response in the short term based on a trial of the new, harsher regulations in a few Central and South American countries last year.
A shared password trial has already been carried out in various American locations where it costs $2 or $3 to add a member account for someone who lives outside of one’s family. Due to the additional fees, numerous Latin Americans cancelled their subscription. Netflix anticipates a short-term decline in engagement but an increase in overall revenue when borrowers start paying off their debts.
The new model
If the experiments conducted last year in Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic are any indication, Netflix members in, for instance, Australia may have to pay an additional $4 AUD a month under the new model. The organisation chose certain nations because it seemed like password sharing was particularly prevalent there.
To allow authorised users to still access their accounts while travelling, subscribers did not impose any limits on mobile devices such as cellphones, tablets, or laptops.
