Sharing your Netflix password with people who are not in your household?
Your days may be numbered.
Netflix said Tuesday it will roll out plans globally to “monetize” account sharing early next year.
How it will work: Netflix will make it easier for you to share your Netflix account with family or friends who don’t live with you by creating “sub accounts” or “extra members.” Each sub account would get a login, profile and personalized recommendations.
The company said this week that you will also be able to transfer your profiles to new accounts which would make it easier for people who share accounts to get their own.
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“We’ve landed on a thoughtful approach to monetize account sharing and we’ll begin rolling this out more broadly starting in early 2023,” Netflix wrote in a letter to shareholders. “After listening to consumer feedback, we are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create subaccounts (“extra member”), if they want to pay for family or friends.”
The strategy is similar to tests Netflix has been running in Latin America that forced subscribers to pay an extra $2.99 for each additional home streaming Netflix.
Though the company has long been aware that its subscribers share passwords, they didn’t do anything about it until earlier this year when the company reported its first year-over-year decline in subscribers.
At the time executives estimated that 100 million households were streaming without paying.
With growing competition in streaming services, Netflix can’t afford to ignore the issue. It’s focusing on adding subscribers and making more money from the subscribers it already has.
The company added 2.4 million new subscribers in the September quarter, more than expected, according to quarterly earnings released Tuesday.
It still added fewer than it did a year ago when it reeled in 4.4 million new subscribers.
Netflix says it expects to add 4.5 million new subscribers in the fourth quarter, also down from a year ago when it added 8.3 million new subscribers.
