Illustration: Cheyne Gateley/VIP+
Pricing for the Streamer Introductions Extra Member option at $7.99 per month to add access to those living in the offshore account holder’s home
If you share your Netflix password with someone who doesn’t live with you, be prepared to pay — it’ll cost an extra $7.99 per month to add another user to your account.
On Tuesday, Netflix said it was cracking down on illegal password sharing with its largest market, the United States, with the goal of squeezing a larger chunk of the change from customers who share their login information with friends and family outside their home.
“Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with in your family,” Netflix says in an email to US customers, which is included in a blog post (See email below). To share Netflix with someone outside your household, you can transfer a profile to a new membership paid for by someone else, or you can purchase an additional member for $7.99 per month on top of the cost of the main subscription.
According to Netflix, paid sharing is widely available at this point but not available in all countries yet.
As part of Netflix’s campaign against customers sharing passwords with people outside their home, the company said it will begin blocking devices (after a certain period of time) that try to access a Netflix account without paying properly. However, Netflix members can continue to access the service while traveling on their personal device or by logging into a new TV (such as at a hotel or vacation rental).
Netflix last month announced plans to roll out paid sharing plans broadly in the second quarter of 2023, delaying that from its original first-quarter schedule.
“A Netflix account is meant to be shared in a single household (people who live in the same location as the account owner),” the operator says on its customer support site — noting that everyone else must have a separate paid account or be added. As an additional paid member.
In February 2023, Netflix introduced its paid sharing plan in four markets – Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain – with a “buy an additional member” option that lets primary account holders pay an additional monthly fee for one or two sub-accounts with whom they don’t live. This came after last year Netflix launched paid participation tests in three Latin American countries (Chile, Costa Rica and Peru).
In its first-quarter letter to shareholders, Netflix warned that it had seen a “cancellation backlash” in countries where it launched paid sharing — and that a broad rollout will likely hurt subscriber growth in the second quarter. But Netflix also pointed to early results in Canada, where its paid membership base is now larger than it was before the launch of paid sharing. Additionally, according to Netflix, revenue per subscriber in the first quarter grew faster in Canada than in the United States
“It’s very much like a price increase — we’re seeing an initial reaction to cancellation,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said in the company’s first-quarter earnings interview. “And then we build on that, both in terms of membership and revenue, as borrowers sign up for their Netflix accounts, and existing members buy the additional membership facility for people who want to share it with them.”
According to Peters, some password borrowers “see as much of our software as a regular payment account, and these people have a very strong likelihood of converting [to paid sharing plans], I would say…and if you’re watching much less than that, you’re less likely to convert in the end. But even then, I’d say that’s a really important structural shift where we’ll grow that one-on-one relationship without distorting pricing, without distorting membership, with a whole new set of members. So we’ll see membership grow through that approach. We’ll see revenue growth through it as well.”
Netflix said its subscriber numbers do not include “additional members”. Instead, total revenue from the primary account and its sub-accounts results in a higher average revenue per membership.
This is the email sent to Netflix customers in the US:
#Netflix #launches #paid #sharing #service #start #blocking #users #unauthorized #passwords