Netflix confirmed that it will charge an extra fee from subscribers who will share their login credentials to others. The new charges will be levied on users from 2023.
After facing the first ever decline in subscribers in the first two quarters of this year due to the ongoing adverse economic conditions,Netflix took a sigh of relief after recording 2.4 million new subscribers .
The OTT platform faced the growing competition in the OTT space and increased demand for content. It was said that due to the rapid increase in prices in the market, Netflix saw a decline in subscribers but one of the most concerning reasons behind the fall in subscriber base was password sharing. And now to deal with this situation, Netflix will now charge an extra fee from users for sharing their passwords.
Netflix has announced that it will start charging users extra for sharing their accounts to other users by 2023. The fee will be added to the billing details in the form of “additional members”. Netflix has still not revealed how much the subscribers will be charged for sharing their passwords with other users. However, some sources hint that the additional fee charged by Netflix will be between $3 to $4.
Meanwhile, Netflix has also introduced the new migration tool for users who don’t want to pay the extra fee. The Migration tool “lets people using your account transfer a profile – keeping the personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games, and other settings – when they start their own membership,” notes Netflix.
Netflix reportedly lost nearly 200,000 paid subscribers in the March quarter and nearly 970,000 paid subscribers in the June quarter. However, in the third quarter revenue report, it was revealed that Netflix has regained 2.41 million subscribers. To further amp up the revenue, Netflix has also announced cheaper ad-supported plans. The Basic with Ads plan will have 5 minutes of advertising per hour and will be cheaper comparative to normal plans. For example, in the US, Netflix will start at $6.99 per month (compared to $9.99 today). These plans will be cheaper yet offer good quality streaming content. As a result, magnating more subscribers.
The Netflix ad-supported subscription plan will launch in Canada and Mexico on November 1 ; November 3 in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the UK, and the US; and November 10 in Spain. While no similar plans have been announced for India, the OTT giant is expected to bring them in the country soon.