Netflix to Start Charging Extra for ‘Password Sharing’ in Select Locations
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Netflix has been lenient with password sharing – letting friends and family use the same account across multiple households – but it seems those days are coming to an end. Over the next few weeks, Netflix will be testing “two new features” that look to limit the number of viewers benefiting from a single account.
Chengyi Long, director of product innovation at Netflix, made the big announcement earlier this week in a brief blog post. According to Long, account sharing is, “impacting [Netflix’s] ability to invest in great new TV and films for [its] members.” By introducing these new features, Long is expecting that to change. Netflix is testing out these two new features in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, and users in those regions will be impacted for the next few weeks. Here’s what the password-sharing plan involves:
Add an Extra Member: Members on the Standard and Premium plans will be able to add sub accounts for up to two people they don’t live with – each with their own profile, personalized recommendations, login and password – at a lower price: 2,380 CLP in Chile, 2.99 USD in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru.
Transfer Profile to a New Account: Members on the Basic, Standard, and Premium plans can enable people who share their account to transfer profile information either to a new account or an Extra Member sub account – keeping the viewing history, My List, and personalized recommendations.
In other words, accounts being used in multiple households will have to pay a small fee to continue doing so, or they can have specific profiles transferred to a new account. This announcement comes just a few months after Netflix raised prices in the United States.
It’s unclear if these new restrictions will ever find their way out of Chile, Costa Rica and Peru – and there’s no guarantee they’ll even be applied permanently to those three locations. Long briefly mentioned that Netflix is aware of the competition in the streaming marketplace, and the company is committed to ensuring a “flexible and useful” system for its members.
“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,” said Long. “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.”
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