Streaming media is big business (as we all learned in season 3 of Succession), so it shouldn’t be any kind of shock that, last year, Netflix started getting serious about cracking down on subscribers sharing their account credentials with non-paying viewers. Following some limited tests, Netflix seriously ramped things up a couple months back, expanding these efforts to prevent password sharing to nations like Canada. We all knew that, barring some massive customer backlash, its plans would soon spread to the US, and today it confirms just that, with paid sharing coming to the States sometime in Q2.
In its Q1 2023 letter to shareholders, Netflix announces that “a broad rollout” of the same sort of paid sharing program that’s already live in Canada will be coming to remaining markets, including the US, over the course of the second quarter (via The Hollywood Reporter).
The streaming giant does not sound at all shy about going all-in on paid sharing, noting that it very well could have gotten started already, and is only taking its time in order to “improve the experience” some more. But if you thought that maybe subscribers would push back against this move, canceling their accounts, and otherwise forcing Netflix to reconsider this major enforcement action — well, it sounds like you could not be more wrong.
Rather than the arrival of paid sharing hurting business, Netflix observes that its subscriber base has actually increased in Canada since implementing the program. And with revenue growth there now surpassing the rate in the US, there’s really no business reason whatsoever for Netflix to change course now.
So, what’s it going to look like when paid sharing finally becomes mandatory in the US? So far, Netflix has yet to share any specific numbers, but in Canada, adding an additional household to an account costs an extra $8 a month — or just about half as much as a standard subscription on its own.
Almost as a footnote to this next chapter of Netflix streaming, the service also shares an extra bit of sad news today: the company is shuttering its old DVD-by-mail operation. You’ve still got all summer to (slowly) watch, but the last discs will go out in late September.
