Netflix is testing a new strategy to avoid sharing accountswhich allows you to “add a home”In addition to the main one by paying an addition to the monthly subscription. And it explains how it finds out when users share passwords with friends and family without paying the extra. The test, for the moment, is limited five nations of South America.
Netflix against account sharing, you can now “add a house”
After you have registered for the first time decline in the number of subscribers global, Netflix is running for cover in several ways. In recent days, it has signed an agreement with Microsoft to launch a cheaper subscription but with advertising. And there is also the possibility that it can sell the rights of its own original shows to other broadcasters to be broadcast as reruns.
But the streaming giant knows that there are a lot of usersi share their account with friends and family. One account, one password, but multiple houses using the service. Instead of directly enforcing a full subscription payment for each home, Netflix is testing ways to add users to an account for an extra fee.
In March he began a test in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru where you paid extra for each family member who wanted to watch Stranger Things, Better Call Saul and all the other Netflix products. And now in Argentina, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras allows you to “add a house”.
Add a house
Estimates of the number of users sharing Netflix passwords are high. We would be talking about over 100 million homes in the world that stream without paying for it30 million in the United States and Canada alone.
Now Netflix is testing the possibility of adding a new home by paying 219 pesos in Argentina (1.67 euros) e $ 2.99 in the other four countries (approximately € 2.94). In these countries, the support page explains:
“Beginning August 22, 2022, when you log into Netflix on a TV outside your home, you will see the option to add an extra home for an additional monthly fee. If you use the TV for a limited time, you can watch Netflix for up to two weeks at no extra cost, provided that account has not been used in that place before. After that time, the TV will be blocked unless you pay to add an extra house “
This way you should be able to use Netflix if you are on vacation. Although from the description it seems that those who spend a lot of time in the same house by the sea will have to get another subscription or pay for the addition. However, you can take advantage of this two-week window for each different location once a year. So if you go back to your beach or mountain home for a couple of weeks in August, you shouldn’t have any problems. And likewise, you might see the season finale of your favorite TV series at a friend’s house every year.
Netflix Account Sharing: How Does It Determine Which Home You Are in?
Netflix defines as ‘home’ a “Physical place where you can use your Netflix on any device available”. This new definition comes after the streaming giant had talked about ‘household‘, which can be translated as either’ family ‘or’ family home ‘, leading to various misunderstandings. Does the son who studies off-site at university belong to this ‘household’ or not?
The definition of casa (‘home‘) seems sharper. The primary house is where you live, if you use a TV in another building where to pay for the addition.
In addition, Netflix explains how it identifies a house in order to recognize if there is account sharing or not:
“We use information like IP address, device ID and account activity. If you are using a device inside the included house and you still see the message that too many houses are using the account, you can make sure that you are connected to the stessa internet network other devices in the house. And that you are not using VPNs, proxies or regional unblocking services ”.
How Netflix Subscriptions Change
In these five countries, each different level of Netflix membership has different possibilities for sharing the account by adding a home. In fact you can:
- To add an extra home with the Bas subscriptione
- As far as 2 with the subscription Standard
- 3 with the subscription Premium
Let’s try to put ourselves in the shoes of those who share the Premium subscription in four people, which would seem to be one of the most common ways of sharing the account, in violation of the rules of Netflix.
The cost for those who have a subscription Premium “split” in four, currently, is 17.99 euro per month each: 4.50 euros per person. Adding 2.94 euros at home (as in the test countries, although this may not necessarily be the case everywhere) you get to 26.81 euros per month, 6.70 euros per person. Judging from these figures, it looks like Netflix is willing to bet that 2.20 euros more is a price that users are devices to pay, to still have the ability to share the account.
“It’s great that our members love Netflix movies and TV series so much that they want to share them with others. But Netflix account sharing is so widespread today undermines our long-term ability to invest and improve our services “.
According to what was projected by the Wall Street company Cowen, if Netflix were to launch this plan to “add a house” it could generate additional revenue of $ 1.6 billion annually. For these figures, several Vecna costumes are bought.
Although it remains to be assessed how users will receive this news in the test countries, with Netflix likely to wait a few more months before implementing similar measures in Europe and North America. But now it seems hard to hope they won’t arrive.
We will keep you posted.