In early February, Netflix’s revised plan to end password sharing began its rollout beyond its initial test countries in several Latin American markets, with the likes of Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain targeted.
In those countries, it launched ‘extra member’ subaccount fees asking subscribers, whose membership is being used beyond one ‘primary location,’ to pay extra for one or two subaccounts.
The plan then was to roll out into other countries with most expected to be done by the end of March. That hasn’t happened.
Cut to today, and on its quarterly earnings call, the company confirmed that they had limited their paid sharing option to those four countries for the whole first quarter of the year and said they are pleased with the results.
“As with Latin America, we see a cancel reaction in each market when we announce [paid sharing plans], which impacts near-term member growth. But as borrowers start to activate their own accounts and existing members add ‘extra member’ accounts, we see increased acquisition and revenue”
As a result, a broad rollout, including the United States, will take place in the second quarter of this year – meaning the crackdown will hit before the end of June.
The news comes as Netflix confirms it is ending its DVD mailing service after 25 years, with the final red envelopes to be delivered in the Fall.
The streamer also talked about the now famous “Love is Blind” live reunion special, which had to be pre-taped and released after the live stream failed to launch.
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters revealed it was a bug introduced while trying to improve live-streaming performance after the first broadcast in March. The bug reportedly didn’t show up on internal testing.
Source: CNN
