In the early hours of this morning, the crackdown on password sharing Netflix had been warning Australia about for months began its dreaded rollout with a single email.
“Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with: your household,” read the service update.
“You can easily watch Netflix on the go and when you travel – either on your personal devices or a TV at a hotel or holiday home.”
“If you want to share Netflix with someone outside of your household, you can use these features…”
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“These features” being either transferring the profile of whoever’s been benefiting from your generosity to a brand new membership plan, thereby preserving their personalised algorithm, or shelling out an additional $7.99 per month to keep this multiple IP address arrangement going.
Stitch-up.
Up until recently, Netflix approached password sharing like that cool parent from your high school days who preferred the underage drinking happened under their roof as opposed to some empty field somewhere. But sadly, the party has officially come to an end.
“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans,” explained Chengyi Long, Netflix Director of Product Innovation.
“While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared.”
“As a result, accounts are being shared between households — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”
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Just how much more will the streaming platform be able to re-invest into fresh content?
According to estimates generated by Cowen & Co analysts, Netflix could collect US$1.6 billion (AU$2.4 billion) – or about a 4% upside to the company’s current annual revenue projection of US$38.8 billion (AU$58.7 billion), notes Variety.
“We think Netflix’s recent efforts reflect a natural progression across more mature markets, and could add incremental subs and [revenue] if the test is rolled out globally,” said the Cowen & Co team led by senior research analyst John Blackledge.
Like we said before, we’re dealing with a different kind of money heist.
