Netflix Users Who Don’t Live in a Domestic Environment: U.S. Evidence Discriminates Between Costa Rica, Central America, and New Zealand
In the coming months, we’re expecting to see passwords shared more widely by Netflix. Netflix has been testing the program with subscribers in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru since early last year, where it started to require users to pay extra for additional users located outside of the subscriber’s primary household.
People who do not live in your household will need to use their own account, according to a US page. That page for Costa Rica, it says you are required to add someone to your subscription in order to use it outside of your household. When someone else is using your account, it will use your device ID, IP address and account activity.
The current US support page is vastly different from the pages in Costa Rica, Brazil, and other countries. On the US page, the company only describes its idea of a household as “people who live in the same location with the account owner.” The pages for the South and Central American countries give more information on how to change homes, sign out of accounts, and what could cause a device to be blocked.
When it comes to trying to push people to sub-account for all of their exes, cousins, ex- roommates, and complete strangers in other countries, it isn’t ready to tell.
Users in these countries will now have to pay to give people they don’t live with access to their account, after similar rules were trialed in Latin America last year.
Under the new rules, subscribers to Netflix’s Standard or Premium plans will be able to pay for up to two people outside of their household to use their account. In Canada, New Zealand, and New York, the cost for adding a new person is between $5.9 and $11, respectively; in Portugal and Spain it’s between $4.7 and $6.45, and in Australia it’s between $4.7 and $8.
Streaming Password Sharing: What has Netflix Learned and What Have We Done? A Facebook Post by Rogers, Netflix, and Disney
The streaming giant, which experienced heavy subscriber losses last year, said in a post that password sharing hurt its revenues and limited its ability to invest in new content.
The company, which has turned a blind eye to password sharing for a number of years, said there was “confusion” among users about “when and how” they could share their accounts.
Users in the four countries will be asked to set a primary location which will ensure that all members of a household watch from the same account. A new “manage access and devices” page will allow members to more easily control who has access.
In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said that, based on its experience in Latin America, it expected a proportion of users to cancel their subscriptions once the changes were rolled out, but forecasts that the overall number of users would grow over time.
Concerns about streaming subscription fatigue and increasing competition from the likes of Disney and Apple caused Netflix shares to plunge more than 50% last year.