Over the past year, Netflix has been working to “make it easy and safe for members who live outside of their family to do so, and pay a little more,” the company said in a blog post on Wednesday. (Kristoffer Tripplaar, Alami)
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LOS ANGELES – Netflix knows you’re sharing your password. And soon you may have to start paying for this privilege.
Over the past year, Netflix has been working to “make it easy and safe for members who live outside of their family to do so, and pay a little more,” the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
As part of this effort, over the next two weeks, Netflix will be rolling out two test features in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru called Extra Member and Profile Transfer.
With “Extra Member,” people who subscribe to Netflix’s standard and premium plans can pay to add an account for up to two people they don’t live with.
These “additional” members will have access like any other Netflix account, including their own profile and login, but at a discount: 2,380 CLP in Chile, $2.99 in Costa Rica, and 7.9 PEN in Peru. Netflix will not count this additional membership in its total paid subscribers, a company spokesperson said.
Separately, the “Profile Transfer” option allows subscribers of any level to transfer their profile information, namely browsing history, to a new account for which they will pay.
Netflix said in a blog post that features like separate profiles and multiple streams for its standard and premium plans were meant for people who live together, but they “created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared.” distributed across households, impacting our ability to invest in great new TV shows and movies for our members.”
It’s a limited test at the moment, but Netflix said it’s rolling out features to those three markets to see how well they perform before potentially rolling them out to the rest of the world.
Netflix has turned a blind eye to password sharing for most of its history. But now that it’s serving nearly 222 million subscribers and competing in a crowded marketplace, it’s thinking of new ways to generate revenue from premium content to attract new users, delight old ones, and compete with competitors like Disney+.
Its investors are worried about slowing growth. Shares of Netflix have fallen 41% this year, and in January the company released a worse-than-expected subscriber forecast.
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entertainment business