Netflix sees jump in subs as it begins to curb password sharing in US, says report

So much for the great exodus that was predicted.

The general consumer is an idiot. It’s basic psychology. Rewarding behavior increases it’s likelihood. Soon other streaming services will follow.

I only consume content the way God intended : Torrent

The sad reality most of us who comment on social media and forums forget is we are just a vocal minority, majority of consumers don't care for these outrages unfortunately. If the end product works good enough for most people then they will keep it/use it.

Bear in mind that Antenna (the source of this info) has no access to internal Netflix metrics, only to opt-in consumer information. We won't really know what's going on with Netflix's numbers until their next quarterly report.

I'm about to the point where I'm just going to go back to pirating. The value of streaming services was in their convenience. I was willing to pay money for that, but the more fragmented and complicated all of it gets, when I can just pay for 1 VPN and go to a site and click a few links...

Yeah, not surprising tbh. They tested the change in smaller countries like NZ first, which allowed them to determine if it was worth doing the same elsewhere.

Password sharing is really common, but I don't think enough people realise - if they give a shit about what they use and where it comes from, they're the minority. That goes for almost any service, not just streaming. The people willing to change their habits to protest are always going to be less than the entrenched people who can be pushed, inch by inch.

Most Netflix users just want something to watch with minimal effort and without having to try or think about it. So if the password doesn't work, they shrug, they accept it, they make their own account, and their routines stay the same. In fact I'm willing to be that of the new Netflix users, a majority of them are probably also subscribed to at least one other streaming service, too.

Convenience is a commodity, and users have different price points.

I'm honestly sort of suspicious of this report. I wouldn't be surprised if the information is misrepresented or outright fabricated.

A spike in subscribers for a period doesn't necessarily mean they're making more money than before, even if the number of new signups offsets the cancellations.

I used to pay for the Premium plan, sharing with my parents, but downgraded to the Basic plan. My parents ended up getting their own Basic plan. So a single account essentially split into two, but the sum of both payments is now less than what it used to be for the single account. So Netflix gained an extra subscriber, but is now making less money from that pool of users.

It's totally possible that some number of these new signups consist of people who did the same thing. It could even be that some number of these new signups are people who joined because others who were sharing with them closed their own accounts.

Basically, seeing a spike in new signups isn't itself a measure of success.

Plex + Sonarr/Radarr and you won't need Netflix anymore ;)

I'm skeptical. If this is indeed true, I believe it will be short lived. The simple reason is that the content is not worth the cost. It worked better when people shared their passwords maybe? I gave up my subscription long before they announced these changes because the content, IMO, mostly sucks.

While I don't watch enough Netflix that this decision will affect me directly, this is awful news, because now I expect more streaming services to see this as a viable option and it will likely be repeated.

The other streaming services will undoubtly follow this trend now that Netflix has shown it works.

No idea how accurate this report is. Either way people online tend to be a vocal minority. The vast majority of people using Netflix either aren't on Reddit or other discussion forums, or are simply lurkers who never comment. I find that people that do comment tend to be doom and gloom when it comes to these sort of things. That applies to me too, as I certainly won't buy Netflix due to their content.

But Netflix is large enough that it will probably be fine for quite some time. Even so I do think streaming is declining rapidly due to too many services and studies have shown that people do pirate more when accessing content becomes tedious. It's all a matter of comfort.

My family is paying nearly $30/month for Netflix now, on top of paying for cable TV, Max, and Amazon. I currently pay for Hulu and Disney+ and share it with the family, but I really hope password crackdowns are not the norm.

If they are, I'm gonna have a good talk with them about other options. Just throwing money away because "Well what if I want to watch something on that platform one night and I don't have it" is precisely how these vampires want people to feel - the fear of lack of access.

It's a little buried in the account settings, but Netflix does allow account sharing for an additional fee (~$7?). I know families that went with this option so they could continue sharing their account with elderly parents, and college aged children.

I imagine that if a group of friends agreed to split the cost of an account + fees, they would end up paying less than having individual accounts.

I actually had no issues with Netflix enforcing their ToS but people can of course cancel their subscriptions if they want. I have no issues with paying for a good service.

Makes sense. Everyone was outraged that they were going to be punished for violating the T&Cs, if just because Netflix never really enforced it, but they’re not actually willing to go without.

Canceled the service myself when they annouced this. Whats the point of a 4 screen subscription in a 2 person household. Would downgrade but video quality and screens are linked. Either way the content on Netflix has been going downhill IMO so it was just another nail in the coffin for me

In Brazil too sadly

The problem is, the answer to "how I watch x show otherwise" is pirate, which is an activity many people simply don't know how to or has many loops in order to make it work.

Hot take but I think ultimately this will work out for them. Nobody is going to cancel their sub over this, because whoever is paying isn't losing anything.

The people who lose access to the account might not sign up, but it doesn't exactly hurt Netflix if they don't, they weren't paying anyway.

I only use Netflix currently, as it comes with my phone plan. The convenience factor is nice, but I find the content library a bit lacking. I must explore Plex at some point.

I think there will be an initial spike of signups, but over the long term the cancellations may outweigh the signups and subscriptions could decrease. Especially if they don't have another hit show like Stranger Things or Squid Game etc.

It is frankly insane how much attention those three paragraphs from a random outlet have garnered. The data they release is sparse, with little context, and largely obscure. It reads like the abstract of a term paper that used questionable statistics to validate a preconceived point. I would not be surprised to find out that they had incentive to publish something that makes Netflix's decision look successful to investors. But even if you trust their numbers, all they are saying is that Netflix had more signups than usual on two days. It doesn't mean anything.

I deleted my account that I was sharing with my family, they understood and are perfectly happy watching my Plex library

Setup a self hosted VPN service with tailscale on my parents computer. Created an exit node on their computer so I can login to Netflix from "home" once a month. This is all free btw.

Perfect solution. But I also only really watch I Think You Should Leave and Better Call Saul. Torrenting these shows instead will be easy if my hack doesn't work long term.

This increase will be more interesting as we see the trend over time. My thought is that while sub numbers will go up, renewal rates, generally, but certainly post-trial will drop precipitously due to casual/temporary interest for the hit show or movie of the week/month/year - using someone else's login to watch a singular "must watch" of the moment will not directly translate to ongoing subscriptions.

Netflix has shifted to quantity over quality (not saying some of their content is not still quite high quality) and with that, viewership and subscription trends will shift as well.

hardly use Netflix, will of a movie we wanna watch is available on it (rare) and it's my parents' anyways so we're gonna get locked out sooner or later. Glad I just decided to build a NAS to make the whole torrenting > media server pipeline easier and with plenty of space

(I never dare voice this opinion, but this is Beehaw so I’ll take a chance. Please be nice!) I understand piracy as a reaction against unfair corporate practice, but in the long run, with enough traction, this kills not only the distributor but the content creators as well.

I worry for the artists and the craft. I don’t want free lunch. Whenever I get free lunch either my attention span is being sold as a product or someone can’t live from their work.

I wish there would be some kind of Bandcamp for series/movies.

Sad. This just rewards the behavior

Sad. I will probably make a Plex server or something for people I share a password with when it comes to the EU.

This is strange. It's a very small data sample for now. I think it won't persist over the long run.