Account locks to be introduced: Netflix soon to be “household only”

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It’s a done deal, and the streaming provider is getting serious: “One Netflix account is meant for one household and members can choose from a range of subscription models.” 100 million customers Netflix wants to get to sign up for their subscription. That plan might have worked a few years ago when the streaming provider was on its own.

In recent years, Netflix has enjoyed steadily increasing user numbers. More than 231 million people pay monthly for the service. For more than 20 years, Netflix was one of the most profitable stocks, but then came the crash. After the lockdowns ended, Netflix couldn’t carry the strong growth. To appease shareholders, it pulled a familiar trick out of its hat: kill off accounts, i.e. those shared among friends, i.e. across multiple households. And then it became quiet about these plans until now.

“In order to be able to invest more in series and movies in the future,” they had tried several ways to crack down on shared accounts. “And now we’re ready,” Chengyi Long, in charge of Netflix innovation, writes on the company’s website. The sharing block will be rolled out in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Other countries are to follow in the coming months.

One option in the future will be to keep the account that spans multiple households legally; for an extra fee. What’s exciting here is how different the prices are in Portugal and Spain. Six euros per month will be due in the latter country, while in Portugal, it will only cost four euros.

According to Netflix’s logic, if one decides to create one’s account, the profile can be transferred, along with the recommendations and one’s own “watchlist.”

One thing is certain: Netflix will check in the future whether the registered profiles are in one household or not: “To ensure that you can use Netflix without interruption, connect to the WLAN network at your main location at least once every 31 days and stream something via the Netflix app or website,” the provider says. For vacationers, there is another solution: an additional code can be used “on seven consecutive days.”

Streaming: the many alternatives
Netflix is no longer alone in the streaming market. The competition was vanishingly small when the service went “on air” in Austria in 2014. Contrary to the many expert opinions, people were more than willing to pay for legal and ad-free content. More than eight years later, the choice is wide: Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount and Sky, to name a few. But that also means that everything is no longer in one place, and quota hits can be scattered across providers. Which in turn means that illegal downloads are on the rise again.

Many Netflix users are now writing that they will cancel their account on Twitter. Only a few are taking the new measures well. So it could well be that Netflix is not doing itself any great favours regarding its user numbers. On the other hand, the news has been more than positively received on the stock market. The share rose and stood at 344.10 euros on Thursday morning.