Surprise! Netflix is winning the war on password sharing
When Netflix announced that they would start clamping down on the practice of password sharing, we were sure that this would be a negative thing for the company. We imagined that many users would just end up not subscribing in the end. It turns out we were wrong.
According to Netflix’s latest quarterly earnings, the company’s decision to fight back against password sharers might have been the right move after all. Netflix claims that they have since added 8.8 million new subscribers in the last quarter, making it its best quarterly subscriber growth in more than three years.
One of the reasons Netflix had initially clamped down on password sharing was due to the company experiencing a drop in subscribers, a first for the platform in the years that it has been around. Prior to that, Netflix had turned a blind eye against these practices, but seeing the drop in subscribers forced them to do something about it.
Netflix has also since offered customers cheaper alternatives, like the ad-supported tier which is priced at $7. They also offered users who shared passwords an alternative to paying full price via a sub account, which would be cheaper than paying for their own Netflix account.
During the quarterly earnings report, the company also revealed that they would be increasing the price of its (now unavailable to new subscribers) Basic and Premium tiers.
Source: IGN