Netflix password crackdown has actually caused a growth in Subscriptions

If Netflix’s reporting on the matter is to be believed, then it’s an ironic outcome considering the wave of strongly-opinionated comments predicting the death of Netflix following the crackdown on password sharing. I guess convenience and habits really trump principles and posturing.

Step 1: Crack down on password sharing.

Step 2: Open subscriptions to foreign countries with cut-rate pricing.

Step 3: Announce subscriber growth.

We’re too smart for you Netflix. Your revenues are actually down because of all the premium-paid subscribers leaving your platform.

I'm not surprised. The number of people sharing accounts who now need their own was always likely to be greater than the number who were going to cancel. They only had to convert a fraction of the non-subdividing viewers for it to work out in their favour. I think they'll find they have less viewers now, though.

The approach of tacitly allowing account sharing to build viewership then cracking down on it to boost revenue is smart enough as a business strategy. It signals what most of these companies will do when it comes time to really monetise.

I worry for the future of the internet when YouTube and Google really kick off. It's going to be a subscription hellscape (it is already, but it's going to be so much worse).

I had a family account, but I stopped using it since going abroad to uni once they cracked down. The amount of content is just at the point where I don't see any value to subscribing.
Generally though, exactly what killed cable TV is killing my use of Netflix and other services. All the interesting stuff is now so spread out on so many different services, it's just no longer worth it.
Dealing with N different subscriptions and different websites, is too much BS to deal with AND pay for, so I'm just going to run my own server.

I canceled when the news broke about shared accounts. Haven’t missed it at all. Arrrr!

Fucking corpos always win

Well I wasn't one of them. I canceled mine.

Corporations bank on the fact that the majority of people would rather complain than go back on what's convenient for them. This was obvious from the start.

If they ever start instituting ads regardless of membership tier, then it's back to buying discs for me. It's just going to turn into another cable service eventually.

I cancelled when they first rolled out their test. Cheaper to get a VPN and sail the seas again.

I didn’t want to subscribe to Netflix but I subscribed after using someone else’s account for years just because my wife was insistent about it.

We already have access to someone’s Plex with Ombi and can request whatever TV shows or movies we want. But she’s too impatient to even wait for max. 24 hours for a movie or a season of a TV show to be downloaded. And sometimes requests fail, since it’s reliant upon inherently unreliable means of downloading like torrents.

Netflix is unfortunately still more convenient than piracy for the average user. But if it was up to me only, I wouldn’t have chosen to subscribe.

IMO this is not surprising, I actually considered buying stock in Netflix, because they were so low.

I'm guessing the ones to complain the most, were the ones who were at the free end of those shared passwords.

I don't use Netflix myself, but adding advertising for slightly cheaper subscriptions, and ending password sharing, seemed like an almost guaranteed win for Netflix to me. At least in the short term.

People here may disagree and find it outrageous, but most people probably don't care enough to make a big deal out of it, and will simply choose the option that suit their needs best.

The account I share with family still works, but the second it doesn’t… it’s the pirate life for me

I cancelled and don't miss it.

I haven't followed the Netflix password news all that closely because I barely ever use Netflix - but when I do use it it's through password sharing an account my sister pays for. That worked as recently as just a week ago.

Should I expect that to stop working soon?

Did they report the growth? Or just new subscribers?

I didn't think there was doubt this would work, it's just a dumbass way of making up the "lost" profit. When you got a Netflix subscription before this, it was based on the total simultaneous screen count. Where the screens are should not matter, and never should have mattered. A simpler, less idiotic solution would have been to rethink the price per screen cost and adjust the plans. It would have been a more acceptable compromise that accomplished the same goal.

And a growth in my friends using my server, let the public support unethical business practices, we'll get fat off their content.

Too bad Netflix content isn't good anymore, it's concerning what the general public enjoy.

well maybe if majority is feeding them, they wont actively crack down those sailing the high seas?

As a person in charge of shared Netflix subscription for my friends I noped out the moment they started password sharing crackdown. Yeah, they added "small" charge to add more users to subscription but the writing was on the wall and I realized I was the frog being boiled.

2 of my friends went for basic plan separately. The cost of 2 basic subscriptions is about the same as 4k / 4 screens one we were using before. So yeah, subscriber count up, now Netflix needs to do a rug pull on basic plan (which they already do in US and UK).

I don't even see a need to pirate stuff from Netflix these days, barely anything worth watching. I still pay for HBO, Disney+, Apple TV+ (part of family Apple One) and Prime - which in the country I live in cost together about they same as Netflix did lol.