TL;DR
- Netflix posted its fourth quarter earnings report on Thursday.
- The report reveals the company is ready to begin cracking down on password sharing.
- People who share passwords with those who don’t live with them will have to pay extra.
The era of sharing Netflix passwords with friends and family for free is coming to an end soon. The company has revealed that it plans on cracking down on freeloaders starting in Q1.
Netflix shared its Q4 earnings report on Thursday where the company revealed subscription numbers excelled past expectations. Despite its positive subscriber count, the company also used the report to follow up on its warning about combating password sharing.
“Later in Q1, we expect to start rolling out paid sharing more broadly. Today’s widespread account sharing (100M+ households) undermines our long term ability to invest in and improve Netflix, as well as build our business,” Netflix said. “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.”
If you didn’t know, Netflix has already been testing out its paid sharing model, rolling it out in countries such as Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. However, the push coming in Q1 2023 will see the paid sharing model expand globally, either forcing users to create their own accounts or pay a little extra to share.
During the test phase of the paid sharing model, Netflix users would set up a primary residence. If you wanted to have a secondary residence, users in Argentina had to pay $1.70, while other countries paid $2.99. The number of residences you could add depended on your subscription plan; Basic gets one residence, Standard gets two, and Premium gets three.
There’s no mention of what users will pay for paid sharing. But if the global release of the model is similar to the test, then users can probably expect to pay anywhere between $1.70-$2.99 in addition to their existing plan.
