Netflix gambled all or nothing when it made the decision to nip shared accounts in the bud. After thinking about it a lot, the entertainment giant decided to block access to all users who connected from locations other than the account administrator. With this, he intended to put an end to the abuse that has always been made of this feature. But how has the company fared after this change? Well, the truth, better than you imagine. And that is worrying.
To mitigate the damage, Netflix released a new “cheap” plan, with ads, and added the possibility for users who want to share to pay for the extra subscriber pass, a pass that, to be honest, is quite expensive. Although many of us were betting on a failure, in the end, ending shared accounts, added to the new cheap plan and the subscriber pass, has not gone so badly for Netflix.
The number of Netflix subscribers skyrockets
Since 2019, and with a few exceptions, Netflix has been maintaining 30,000 new subscriptions per month. However, since we began to hear about the end of shared accounts, a year ago, the number of new subscriptions has been increasing progressively. Finally, when the new measure came into force, in May of this same year, Netflix registered an increase of 102% in the number of new subscriptions, reaching the barrier of 100,000 new users.
It is true that there have been many casualties in service. But, to be honest, these casualties have been much less than originally expected. This means that on social networks there has been a lot of noise about nothing, and most people, although they have complained, have ended up jumping through hoops in the end. At least, in United States.
In Spain, the picture is somewhat different. Although it is true that there have been users who have subscribed to the service, the casualties since the possibility of sharing accounts was blocked amount to million users. Of course, users are liking the plan with ads much more than initially expected, especially after the company improved it and added 1080p video instead of 720p as offered by the basic plan.
Other platforms will follow suit
If Netflix is doing well, then where’s the bad news? Many platforms, like Disney+, HBO, Amazon Prime, and the like, were waiting to see what would happen with Netflix. And, seeing that their blocking of shared accounts has succeeded, we will not doubt that they will follow the same steps.
Without going further, Amazon Prime Video is already preparing a new plan with adsat least in the United States, which will allow users to save on their subscription in exchange for seeing (more) advertising. Max (successor to HBO Max) is also preparing changes for its rebranding, and, among them, we will surely find more limitations when it comes to sharing accounts.
In the end, the ones who are going to lose are us. And it is that, although we hoped that Netflix’s movement to end shared accounts would not go well, in the end it has been a success.
