Netflix is introducing password-sharing restrictions in four more countries.
Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain. Customers in these countries will be asked to pay an additional fee if they wish to share their subscription with friends or family members who do not live with them. The move follows a crackdown on password sharing in South America and is expected to roll out in the UK by the end of March. Netflix estimates that worldwide has 100 million people using shared accounts. The decline in revenue from joint accounts has hurt Netflix’s ability to invest in new programming content, the company said. It says it will roll out the new approach to more countries in the coming months.
Back in 2017 Netflix even appeared to be sanctioning the practice when it tweeted “Love is sharing a password”. But growing competition in the streaming market, and customers cutting back on subscriptions due to the rising cost of living, have prompted Netflix to focus on shoring up its revenues. The firm said that allowing accounts to be used by several people within households had “created confusion” about when and how people could share. It said members in Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal would now be asked to set up a “primary location” for their account and manage who has access to it. Members would still be able to watch Netflix when they traveled, both on personal devices and logging in in other places, for example in a hotel, it said.
In the first half of 2022, Netflix’s subscriber numbers dropped sharply. Hundreds of jobs were cut and prices went up to cover the rising costs. However, the company has surpassed expectations in the last three months of 2022 with its 7.66 million increase in user numbers reaching nearly 231 million paying subscribers worldwide. In November, it rolled out cheaper ad-supported options in 12 countries including most of Europe, the UK, and the US.
