Netflix Is Ending Password Sharing Very, Very Soon

We are about to see a huge gamble from Netflix, one that will affect 100 million of its viewers, lest they not pay the company its due. According to a new report (via WSJ), the end of Netflix password sharing is nearly here, and the company is expected to roll out its plan early in 2023 in the US.

“Make no mistake, I don’t think consumers are going to love it right out of the gate,” Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors in December, and that’s the risk. Outside analysts guess that Netflix could make $721 million in revenue from the plan next year, based on surveys of customers who said they’d pay to keep additional family members signed-in, if Netflix instituted that policy.

But that’s all those are, estimates, and Netflix risks turning off its consumers by instituting a move that no other major streaming service has in place. Netflix’s premium tier is already the highest price streaming service on the market, and some sort of additional fee for additional members on the account will only increase that. We’ve already gotten to the point where multiple streaming services for larger pools of content are adding up to cable-like bills, so it’s easy to see a significant number of consumers dropping Netflix entirely rather than acquiesce to this new demand.

Netflix is already attempting to test this system in Latin America, which has resulted in both consumer complaints and some amount of sign-ups. One problem they’re reportedly having is with people who are traveling, as they aren’t able to properly track whether it’s a main “household” member traveling to another state or country, or someone new attempting to log in on the same account elsewhere. Additional issues include unique situations like children who share time between the homes of two different parents.

There’s no price for this idea yet. Netflix’s new ad-supported play is $7 a month, and reportedly, execs think the “additional people” fee should be pretty close to that, with the ultimate idea to push people into just having their own subscription entirely, which is Netflix’s ultimate goal, increasing subscriber numbers which have lagged or even fallen as of late, hence the new urgency to implement this system.

This does fundamentally feel like something that has the potential to backfire on a large scale. Netflix is already expensive, and over the years, has gotten so many competitors with their own show libraries, it’s easy to just drop Netflix and subsist on a diet of Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Paramount, Apple, whatever. And none of those other places are charging for password sharing.

That said, if Netlfix does this and it works? That’s a situation where you might see them set an industry trend, and then sure enough, you would see Hulu or HBO Max institute similar policies, seeing that it benefitted Netflix, and could do the same for them. In short, if you don’t want to see this become widespread in the streaming industry, don’t pay for it.

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