Netflix’s decision to crack down on password sharing seems to be paying off, with the streaming giant saying its added nearly six million paid subscribers during the three months ending in June.
Netflix has said the revenue in those regions is now higher than before, adding that “sign-ups are already exceeding cancellations”. The move is reported to have brought its subscriber base to more than 238 million globally.
Netflix’s chief financial officer, Spencer Neumann, described paid sharing as the “primary revenue accelerator in the year” during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.
“Most of our revenue growth this year is from growth in volume from new paid memberships and that’s largely driven by our paid sharing rollout,” he said.
Earlier this year, Netflix told users in more than 100 countries, including the US, Britain, Australia, Singapore and Mexico, that they could not share their passwords with their family of friends outside of their household.
The emails say that a Netflix account should only be used by one household and if customers want to add members outside of their household they need to pay a fee (the fee is $8 US dollars a month in the US). If users decide to do this they will also get to keep the profile’s viewing history and recommendations.
Netflix said last year that it was going to halt account sharing after estimating that more than 100 million households supplied log-in details to accounts outside of their home.
