Sharing a Netflix Account Might Cost You More Next Year
- Oct 19, 2022
- 2 min read
Netflix's crackdown on account sharing is imminent, as revealed in its latest earning results. The streaming giant plans to implement its new policies against password sharing early next year in an attempt to boost its revenue. It has estimated that over 100 million households globally use the service through shared accounts, and soon the company will be going after these users through various methods.
"We've landed on a thoughtful approach to monetize account sharing and we'll begin rolling this out more broadly starting in early 2023."
According to the shareholder letter, Netflix will start implementing account sharing monetisation in 2023, which is just a bit later than expected, as an internal note to employees from earlier this year stated that the move would come around the same time that its ad-supported plan launches. Speaking of which, the "Basic with ads" subscription tier was recently officially unveiled by the platform, due to initially launch in 12 countries next month.
The letter goes on to say that the method chosen for the wider monetisation will be the ability to make sub-accounts, a feature that has been in testing in certain countries since March. With this feature, those who live in different households may no longer pay the standard fee for sharing a single account, but each person outside the household must pay an "extra member" fee.
Netflix has also been experimenting with a feature for users to add "extra homes", charging add-on fees for those who frequently access the service outside of their primary home. However, this particular method was not mentioned in the letter, hinting that it has possibly either been shelved or, at the very least, delayed.
Just yesterday, the streaming service provider announced a new tool called Profile Transfer, which lets users transfer their profile data — containing their watch history, watch list and other settings — from an existing account to a new account. This could easily be seen as Netflix's way of easing users into paying for its service once it starts cracking down on those sharing accounts.
Netflix has confirmed in its latest shareholder letter that it will begin clamping down on users sharing accounts from different households.
Starting from early 2023, users with shared accounts will have to pay an add-on fee for "extra members".
The streaming giant has estimated that over 100 million households globally use shared accounts.
