Will Netflix’s competitors follow in cracking down on password sharing
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Netflix has done the once unthinkable: Cracked down on password sharing.
But will its competitors follow suit?
Netflix company says around 100 million of its 250 million subscribers worldwide share passwords.
The company started informing Canadians last week by email about new stipulations around extra users. The company had tested new password-sharing rules in Costa Rica, Chile and Peru.
Now Canada, Portugal, Spain and New Zealand will be the latest guinea pigs for the changes, with more locations expected to follow in the near future.
Streaming audio giant Spotify offers a variety of sharing plans, ranging from Premium Duo (for two, $12.99 a month, as opposed to $9.99 for one), to Premium Family ($15.99 for up to six accounts).
Spotify said in 2018 and 2019 it would try to crack down on users breaking its one-roof rule by asking them first if they live together and later to share their location with the app.
Last year, the company sent out a questionnaire asking users about specific ideas around plan types and sharing (Disney Plus, a newer entry, has also sent out a questionnaire to users in some countries).
Right now, Spotify asks members to verify that they live with the plan manager. If users fail to comply within a week, they’re out of the plan and switched to a free one for 12 months.
Crave, which streams content from HBO and other powerhouses, offers a total subscription for $199.90 annually which can be shared (up to four streams at once), or a much more limited $99.90 plan (one stream, no casting, available on phone or web).
Amazon Prime allows sharing of passwords, while AppleTV+ allows up to five people to share Apple services, including its streaming video service. Disney+ Canada allows up to seven profiles, with four streams allowed to be active at the same time.
For Netflix, a help page had been changed recently to say “when a device outside of your household signs in to an account or is used persistently, we may ask you to verify that device before it can be used to watch Netflix or switch your Netflix household.”
The way around it is to pay more. The “premium” plan, which allows four users to watch at once, costs $20.99 a month. It will include an extra $7.99 fee if those users are in multiple locations.
Netflix did not say when it would begin enforcing the new rules.
“It’s worth noting that this will not be a universally popular move, so there will be current members that are unhappy with this move,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters, in a conference call back in January. “We’ll see a bit of a cancel reaction to that. We think of this as similar to what we see when we raise prices.”
