Mike Peterson
Netflix has announced a pair of new measures to charge users sharing passwords between people who don't live in the share household.
In a blog post Wednesday, Chengyi Long, Netflix's director of Product Innovation, said that the new mechanisms are a response to the "confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared."
The most notable anti-password sharing measure is something Netflix is calling "Add an Extra Member," which allows users on Standard and Premium plans to add sub accounts for up to two people they don't live with.
While the extra members are available at a "discounted price," it's still an additional cost on top of the subscription price that Netflix recently hiked to new highs.
Netflix will test the new "Add an Extra Member" mechanism in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru in the coming months. The additional members will cost 2,380 CLP in Chile, $2.99 in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru.
Additionally, Netflix is adding a new feature that will make it easier to kick other people off your account. It's called "Transfer Profile to a New Account," and it allows people who share passwords to transfer profile information — such as viewing history and personalized recommendations — to either an Extra Member sub account or a completely new subscription.
"We recognize that people have many entertainment choices, so we want to ensure any new features are flexible and useful for members, whose subscriptions fund all our great TV and films," Netflix said. "We'll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world."
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
36 Comments
Assume this will be based on IP addresses? My daughter is in another state and is sharing our family account. I’ll be moderately annoyed if we have to pay extra for her.
Netflix and others need to come up with a scheme similar to the legacy newspapers online access: create a limited number of free connections with a discount for new accounts and a reward for the account sharing the info.
I know there will be a lot of whining about this plan. But Netflix (and eventually others) have to do this. Too many are sharing with others outside of their households. Had a cousin that shared the account with her daughters when they went off to school. Who shared it with their friends and/or S/Os. My cousin wound up locked out of her own account. She had to call CS, reset the password and won't share her account with anyone now that the daughters have moved out.
...I don't know of any company that has raised pricing so much in such a short time, and here they 'bundle' 4K conditional on additional multiple seats irrespective of of customer need... Is Kanopy an alternative via public libraries with seemingly more erudite content...?
www.kanopy.com
It is easily done Apple devices, checking Apple ID.