The test run of Netflix’s crackdown on password-sharing is not going well
Bad news: The thing nobody wants seems to be poorly thought-out
Aux News Netflix
Everyone get your tiny violins ready, we have some bad news for Netflix that we feel really, really bad about. Really. We feel sooo bad for Netflix. We’re holding back tears over here, screaming to the heavens about how Netflix doesn’t deserve to be punished and how too many bad things happen to the perfectly nice streaming services that never do anything wrong. Not ever!
But yeah, the bad news: The test run of Netflix’s new system for cracking down on people who are sharing their password, currently happening in Costa Rica, Chile, and Peru, is not going well. Super sad, right?! Apparently, the core issue is one of messaging, with Netflix charging people the equivalent of $2 or $3 extra to share their account with anyone outside of their “household,” but the exact definition of “household” seems… predictably vague and limiting.
Apparently, the official Netflix stance is that a household is “exclusively people a subscriber lives with” and not a subscriber’s immediate family. This comes from Rest Of World, which says that the National Institute For The Defense Of Free Competition And The Protection Of Intellectual Property believes this could be taken as “a way of discriminating against users arbitrarily.” Basically, the idea seems to be that a Netflix account would be tied to a physical location, which just sets up a lot of questions that Netflix doesn’t seem to have solved—like what if you move, or you’re on vacation, or your child goes off to school?
Rest Of World spoke to “more than a dozen” Netflix subscribers in Peru who said that they were confused about the new rules and that Netflix wasn’t even enforcing them, with an anonymous customer service rep saying they were told that, if a customer calls and complains, they should be given a special verification code that will let them use their account in multiple locations. So even Netflix doesn’t seem particularly concerned with sticking to this system.
The downside is that these all seem like solvable problems, or—if you want to be cynical—problems that Netflix could just ignore. Limiting an account to a physical location is only a problem if you think Netflix gives a shit about screwing over customers. Seeing as how we’re even talking about an anti-sharing crackdown in the first place, it seems pretty obvious just how much Netflix cares.
172 Comments
Wouldn’t this system make it impossible to use Netflix on your phone using mobile data?
Presumably detect mobile OS and say, sure, go ahead.
Yep. Another common use case. Also it’s very rare for consumers to have a static IP address. The one on your home router wouldn’t change often but in theory any time it’s rebooted it could get assigned a new IP.
“Wouldn’t this system make it impossible to use Netflix on your phone using mobile data?”
No, because Sam Barsanti’s assumption that your account would be tied to a physical location is *literally* nothing but Sam Barsanti’s assumption. There is no basis in A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G that anybody has said.
Or logging in on a hotel smart TV, which I often do. What they really need is device-level permissioning and two-factor authentication for logins from devices not on the list.
Yeah, maybe they should implement some sort of rule where “if a customer calls and complains, they should be given a special verification code that will let them use their account in multiple locations.”
If only they thought of doing that, which would be a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very simple solution to the absolutely MINDBENDING predicament you’ve presented!
Why would anyone do that? You can’t go five feet without hitting a public Wi-Fi hotspot.
Maybe you can’t, but trust me, there are plenty of places in the country where public wi-fi is sparse to non-existent.
In an urban area maybe. I’m in a suburb bordering on rural and there are tons of dead zones.
Hulu Live has something like this but they only limit it on smart TVs and Rokus and the like.Like, if I watch Hulu Live on my phone or on a computer, it will never stop me, but if I take my Roku with me on vacation or when we moved, it asks me to verify that this is my new location and it gives me 3 or 4 “moves” per year.I’ve never tried to change it more than twice in a year, but I’m sure they’d be pretty flexible with it.Seems like that kind of system could work for Netflix to limit sharing but keep it unnoticeable for most people who aren’t sharing.
Their innovative plan to slowly become a cable TV station continues to creep along.
I can see streaming services starting to take on the philosophy of DirecTV. “The anti-consumer moves will continue until subscribers stop leaving!”
I *support* their intention (“support” I guess is kinda strong.. more like I…understand and am not opposed?) but they sure are going about it in a poor manner.. Yes, locking accounts to a location is the best way to make SURE you aren’t sharing with people outside your household, but obviously there were going to be huge issues with that, duh.. IMHO a decent middleground would be a mix of that and something smarter, like, maybe set it so you can have XX concurrent streams at any given time (maybe a decrease from the current limit, even, I have no idea what the limit is), but have streams from IN the household trump those from outside. So say you have 5 people using an account at the same time, 2 in the house and 3 on the other side of town. If a 3rd person in the house starts streaming, one of the 3 people outside the household gets booted. Not perfect, but there are zero solutions to this “problem” that wont piss off consumers, kuz guess what, consumers LOVE free shit.Actually I just had another thought. They could maybe try Visible’s pricing scheme even. Have multiple people under the same “group” with their own accounts, but the more people in the group the less each pays (each with their own bill and other people paying their own bills having no impact on your own service) to a certain limit. Like, a solo account pays $15/m, but two people together pay $12/m each, 4 people $10/m each, 10 people $5/m each, or something like that. People would still be able to get affordable access, maybe even at a discount, but it would probably help Netflix’s image and maybe even draw in new customers. I mean look at Visible, they are certainly not having any problems and at max discount they are like $15 or $25/m for unlimited EVERYTHING.
Its not really free.. but the issue is, we have a MOBILE lifestyle.. everyone does these days.. from going to work, to generic trips.. it means you are not always going to be at a physical location for most streaming..
Example: Lets say I have 4 people in the house.. 1 Kid, GrandPappy, the wife and Me.. Wife and Me work, so we each stream (via laptop/tablet/phone) as we commute to work.. I work in NY, wife works in NJ. GrandPappy frequently visits his friends in CT.. the kid hangs out in NY, but also NJ and even in PA sometimes..
We then sometimes get together to watch a show/movie… but more often than not, we are watching to fill time until the next task/event…
Based on that (which is VERY common, at least in the US).. brings up at least 3-4 states, and at least (Depending on the frequency of connection and time watched, might be as many as 30 different IPs.. (that doesn’t count VPN’s I might be on to bypass Geo limits or physical location security controls)..
In short, trying to limit based on geo IP is a fools errand.. it would have worked in the era of dialup and when phones were tools of executives so everyone pretty much watched things together (and fought about what to watch and in what order… (ahhh, I remember those days.. so many knife fights between my sister and me.. good times).. but these days, AT&T is practically in the delivery room trying to sign the little stinker up for a new plan and phone because its never too early. So you might have 4 people with 30-40 IP sets from different regions/cities/countries but are in fact still within the “house”.
The reality that they don’t understand is that nobody shares just one service. My parents pay for Prime, Paramount+, and Disney+. I access their accounts in exchange for access to my Netflix, Hulu+, HBO Max, and Shudder. I guarantee we aren’t the only people doing this. Streamers want to be a cable alternative but you can’t get there by just being fucking cable.
This is exactly what my friends and I do. And the reality is that none of us would pay full-time for all of them, or really more than one or two. We would just sign up, binge watch, and rotate through them a month or two at a time. I probably would keep Netflix and Amazon. I watch enough Netflix for it to be worthwhile, and I figure the Amazon streaming is free – I get MORE than enough other value out of Prime that I don’t even really have it for the streaming anyway. HULU I am considering ditching already as I don’t watch it enough, and the rest of them are casual use at best. Apple TV, HBO Max, Disney, and Paramount+ I would never pay for full-time.
It’s ironic that cord-cutting and streaming subscriptions were pitched as a low-cost alternative to $100+ cable subscriptions, yet to get close to the same viewing options today you’d have to subscribe to so many services that it’s now more expensive.
This assumes that you need to have access to 500 channels’ worth of stuff at all times. If you’re picky and just subscribe to a streamer when there’s something interesting and new to watch (or to catch up on stuff you missed, where you can watch an entire season in a week or two), you save a ton of money. We watch 2-3 hours a TV a night (not including what our kids are watching in their rooms), all on paid streaming services, and our annual expenditure on TV is around $400-500. Meanwhile my parents have an old-fashioned cable subscription and pay over $200 per month. (It’s a fairly premium package with like HBO and sports and shit, so it could easily be cheaper if they selected a smaller package; but even at half the price they’d still be spending double what we’re spending.)
Yep, streaming subscriptions are a lot easier to cancel then cable still so you can do pay for a few months, watch what you want and drop it. We have an annual tradition to get Shudder during the fall
“spooky” months.Also check if your cell phone provider has a deal with some of these companies. I get Netflix for free as part of T-Mobile and I got a year of Apple TV and Paramount+ through them as well. Paramount+ I may have paid for to watch Picard but I had no interest in Apple TV but its been cool to have.
We just subscribed to Apple TV+ for the first time a couple of weeks ago, since it had finally accumulated enough shows that I thought it would be worth checking out. Ted Lasso is great, and we’ve enjoyed to varying degrees the first episodes of Schmigadoon, Foundation, Mythic Quest, and The Afterparty. And there’s still like 7 or 8 other promising shows to try. Since it’s only $5 a month we’re like, whatever.
I pay for all my streaming but I share the access with my parents and in-laws because they are on a fixed income and they would not pay for it themselves.
My mother still has cable for some reason so I use her cable account for HBOMax (and theoretically Showtime and whenever I need random stuff on TNT/ESPN/AMC, etc,) but her TVs have my Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+ (out of which I think she only realizes she can use Netflix) and she’s in my Prime household.
Yup I share my hulu/disney bundle, Netfix, & hbo in exchange for my friend’s YoutubeTV account. Works out perfectly.
It’s less that consumers love free shit and more that sane people share expenses with each other.
Actually, looking at the Netflix subscription plans, the real issue is that Netflix loves free shit. The plan that supports 1080p resolution allows 2 devices to stream simultaneously, and the plan that supports 4k resolution allows 4 devices to stream simultaneously. If a person lives alone and subscribes to the 4k plan, they likely aren’t streaming to 4 devices simultaneously, which is to say that they are not completely utilizing the service they’re paying for. It’s not like there’s a discount for only using one device.Basically, Netflix has run into a core issue with their business model. They sell portability and simultaneous utilization, and they’re trying to dissuade people from using those features.
Perhaps it’s poorly thought out because it was always announced as a test. It was never, ever advertised as something that was going to be heavily enforced. I don’t know, but it seems like the media picked this story up and turned it into more than it ended up being. Looks like the test is, thankfully, failing.
Or the media picked the story up in the hope that awareness would prime people to resist it.Boy I’m getting weary of hearing the words “the media” as some kind of scapegoat or boogeyman for every hot take.
I used the term “the media” because I was reading, essentially, the same article on multiple websites, even if their normal purview wasn’t Netflix. I don’t need Kotaku and Polygon and the AV Club and Gizmodo and the Verge and Vox, etc., to have the same story as “news” by three different writers.
Can’t edit my post, but multiple writers, not three…
Those sites have different audiences, all of them are likely to use Netflix though, so it’s completely legitimate for them to cover it, and throwing around “the media” just makes you sounds like you’re about to go on an alt-right rant.
Limiting an account to a physical location is only a problem if you
think Netflix gives a shit about screwing over customers. Seeing as how
we’re even talking about an anti-sharing crackdown in the first place,
it seems pretty obvious just how much Netflix cares.
God damn, Sam, how little is GMG paying you that you are this mad at them over this?
A huge portion of Netflix users don’t pay for the service, which means either higher prices for everyone else, or worse quality content for everyone. (No public company is going to just eat the lost revenue and accept lower profits in the United States — that’s just asking for a shareholder revolt.) Of course they were going to crack down on this.
Actually, that’s a false equivelacy..
The people that are, lets say leeching off another account most likely wouldn’t pay for the content themselves anyway.. and netflix doesn’t earn based on the number of eyeballs glued, they pay per subscription (and other partnerships/incentives).. So those “lost” consumers were never ones they would have had anyway.. (they would maybe convert 3-5% of them). So there is no reason to raise prices other than the fact that they want to because the shareholders are not making ENOUGH money.. The reality is, this is about the fact that netflix has LOST a lot of ground because they are no longer the only big (somewhat global) streaming service.. and most of the newer players OWN the content so they don’t have to play with netflix.. and that means now they have to compete hard. Also netflix’s streaming model for SOME people encourages a pump and dump mindset.. (join, binge watch the available seasons of X show, then cancel, wait until next year.. rinse and repeat).. Vs. others streaming services come from a TV mindset which means they like to dole out the episodes.. so people HAVE to keep the subscription longer (and then you get into that window of “well, I’ve already had it for 4-6 months (even a 8 months) so the cost is not burdensome”.
In short.. the have a model that worked great when they were the only streaming game in town (by comparison to generic cable TV).. but in this era of streaming glut and specialized services that cater to specific tastes (CrunchyRoll, Shudder, Disney+, etc…) they have to adapt.. and its easy to blame the fleeing consumers pegging a percentage as “leeches” but like Movie/TV piracy, some of that actually helps by exposing content that wouldn’t otherwise be noticed/seen so that people DO watch it).. I say this as someone that has Disney+ (picked up during a pre-release so its free until 2024), Netflix, and my own movie/TV collection that pretty much rivals (just no way to legally monetize it).. the issue is really “what the hell should I watch?” since finding a movie/show becomes a task on its own one that you start to say “fuck it, I’ll just default to whatever shows up at the top)
True. My sister gave me her password without me asking for it. I occasionally use it. I don’t care if i have access to Netflix or not. I wouldn’t become a subscriber since even with someone else’s password i’m not a frequent user. Most shows that i enjoy are on HBO.
How did you arrive at this 3-5% number?
They already limit how many people can watch at once (one at a time on the lowest tier plan) which is reasonable and keeps any password sharing among people you’d trust. If someone lets their parents use their Netflix account they either have to spring for an expensive multi-user plan or never use it at the same time. This new system would make it so you couldn’t use Netflix if you left your house? What if you want to watch Netflix on your phone at the laundromat or in your hotel on vacation? It’s going to be a hassle even if you’re the only person who ever uses your account if you’re at all mobile and that’s why it’s a terrible idea and maybe even a class action suit waiting to happen.
Hey, I’m not saying this is a good implementation. I’m saying this was clearly inevitable.
It wasn’t, though. Mary Pickford is right. I’m already paying extra for the ability to stream on two devices at once. And the only reason to do that is so I can share my account if my parents happen to be watching at the same time as me. They already solved their supposed problem. They’ve made up this “other” issue to excuse a subscriber drop. It’s total bullshit. And clearly they have no clue how to implement the “solution”.
Whether it’s “made up” or not, it’s something they have to demonstrate a desire to do something about (even if it’s not a sincere desire), or the board is going to get replaced with folks by activists shareholders who will do something about it.
it’s something they have to demonstrate a desire to do something about (even if it’s not a sincere desire)Okay, then by that same logic we, the customers, have to make a show of displeasure at the changes (even if we’re not terribly upset). If we don’t, Netflix will go even further with price hikes and stipulations.It’s all just shitty negotiating on a mass scale. Each side needs to bring more to the table than they actually want to walk away with.
Okay,
then by that same logic we, the customers, have to make a show of
displeasure at the changes (even if we’re not terribly upset). If we
don’t, Netflix will go even further with price hikes and stipulations.If I ever suggested that people shouldn’t complain about this, I apologize. That was not my intention and I screwed it up.
I just don’t think that Sam acting like Netflix is some sort of unique bad actor among publicly traded entities is realistic. (And he play-acts a lot of the time, so who knows if he even really feels that way.)
Corporations that lose a big chunk of market value all at once almost all freak out and often in ways that seem deeply counter-productive. It’s not great, but it’s super-common.
I get the doubt/side-eye at Sam. I do. But you’re among a bunch of others who bag on the guy all the time in a way that annoys me. I don’t understand how you can be so sure that his “outrage” or what the fuck ever is “performative”. “he play-acts a lot of the time”. How do you KNOW that? Are you a member of his social circle? Do you know something about him that the rest of us don’t? I have this same reaction a lot of the time to a lot of commentariat who shit-talk the writers on all these sites. You might very well be right about them and they’re just cynical clickbait pretenders. But none of you ever seems to even acknowledge that MAYBE that’s not true. And hey, writers fleeing the sites due to weird union shit and relocation shit… I mean… Yeah. Not great. Seems suspect. BUT STILL, I don’t see how you can just assume malfeasance. To the extent that it feels, to me, like needless antagonism.
If I’m doing it a lot, I don’t mean to. I feel like I let a lot of nonsense pass on these sites, although not always.
As for believing some of this stuff is performative, I used to regularly look at writers’ Twitter feeds to get another sense of who they are when they write something interesting, either for good or bad reasons, and there are more than a few writers across all these sites who definitely put on a persona while writing that they don’t use elsewhere.
I haven’t looked at Sam’s in recent memory, so maybe this is who he is, and my impression of him is drawn from some out of date or simply inaccurate source.
That’s fair. I mean… I’m friends with a couple of freelance bloggers/writers (none here, to be clear) and I don’t envy them having to make a living that way. It doubtlessly makes me defensive.
No, you’re good. I agree with what you said about someone needing to take action on the company side of things. I was kinda just bringing it full circle because several people are here having a conversation about it and I think it’s worth pointing out.I’m not an AV Club regular so I’m unfamiliar with Sam. It sounds like you might be talking about all this on a deeper level than I noticed or am able to engage in.
Doesn’t matter, Netflix is about to become the Yahoo! of streaming services. Oh, it’ll sputter and clang along for years after this, but they’re already at the “punish the paying customers” phase of their journey to the rear of the pack. Perhaps Princess Leia said it best “The more you tighten your grip, the more subscribers slip through your fingers.”Folks at Netflix should take a look at how SiriusXM handled their swan dive… they’ll do damn near anything to keep subscribers; every time I call to cancel, they shave more off the subscription price and I wind up keeping it, even though I only use the service a couple times a month. Not saying 4.99 a month is viable for Netflix, but, there has to be a price point where it’s better to have me subscribed than not; I know how much I *won’t* pay for their service, and they passed that threshhold a while ago.
It’s okay to say “a corporation wringing more money out of users is wrong.” There are certainly civil and legal penalties for a corporation to take that stance, but that’s because corporations are amoral nonperson entities. Likewise, it’s okay to say that the corporate boards should be required to kill and eat one member every quarter, to satisfy Moloch.
I actually don’t think the way corporations must value growth — not even profit — over all else by the stock market is OK. The industry I work in is being actively destroyed by it.
But that’s also why I am completely unsurprised when it happens, even if people don’t like it or can muster good arguments against it. I made those same arguments right up until a former employer laid me (and my entire floor) off.
If Netflix was better managed, they could have postponed this reckoning, but they weren’t, and a lot of their early success was based on being first. Once everyone started clawing back their IP for their own streaming services, Netflix had to do a lot to remain competitive — they certainly spent enough on new content — but some of the necessary changes didn’t fit with their current corporate culture (which was happy to waste money on things like Tudum that they essentially hid in the corner, ensuring it was a money loser) and likely won’t happen without a big shake-up at the top.
Mary Pickford is RIGHT!
The Kinja Caffeine Johnson is RIGHT!
That’s exactly what I call my piece!
But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to try to prevent account sharing outside of that scenario. My kids all trade account passwords with their friends on various platforms. I just cleaned out my Hulu profile after discovering there were like 10 different people who had logged in. That IS stealing, pure and simple, and I can understand how Netflix would want to control it to the extent possible. We can complain about the methods they’re using, but the motivation is entirely fair.
“They’ve made up this “other” issue to excuse a subscriber drop.”
Yeah, that must be why they’ve been talking about doing this before the recent sub drop.
It certainly wasn’t inevitable, if we assume Netflix is run by rational actors who prioritize profit and want a well-run and successful company.I guess that’s a mistaken assumption? This drivel about a “shareholder revolt” is basically a fantasy, and if it did happen, and the shareholders were angry about account sharing, it would merely illustrate that the shareholders were not rational actors, and lacked basic common sense on top of that.It’s idiocy of the purest kind. The only reason Netflix gets away with charging what they do is because of account sharing. It’s certainly not worth the 4k package price without that, and the idea that they can “crack down” on account sharing without destroying the value proposition of the product, without driving away far more customers than they could even potentially gain is just laughable and stupid.
This is the exact thing I don’t understand, Netflix touts it’s service on everything. I have 2 young children and pay for 4 screens.So what happens when 2 of them watch in the car while I watch at home? You can’t have a “watch anywhere” service then say “limited to location”
Sam, how little is GMG paying you that you are this mad at them over this?
If the anger seems unreasonable, then it’s clickbait.
Evidently it works.
I think the thing you aren’t really factoring in is that Netflix already has a problem of their service not being seen as good value. They increased their prices several times while losing licensed content to competitors and cancelling shows. They’re at the top of the market in terms of price already and trying to squeeze more out of customers still.I don’t know if it’s a sound assumption that they can convert a significant portion of freeloaders to paying customers of their own. I don’t know if it’s even a sound assumption that the people currently subscribing will keep paying if they can’t share the service and part of the cost with others as easily. Someone on another board said a while back that the worst thing a subscription-based company can do is remind you that you’re paying for the service by sending you a note of prices going up or features getting worse. And they’re right – plenty of people will pay away for something they barely use until they realize it.If it were me, I’d spend more time focusing on how to better use that obscene content budget Netflix has so that people want to be subscribed year round. They should have 8-10 hits like Stranger Things with how much they spend but they don’t. Yet of all the people being fired, their chief of content isn’t one of them.
This is exactly right.I dropped my Netflix account recently, but the only reason I had it for so long was that I was sharing it. The prices were excessive compared to the increasingly poor content, but with three of us using it, it seemed more reasonable.And yeah, the head of content needs to seriously be considering his position, frankly. Spending $270m on the penultimate season of Stranger Things is idiotic doubling-down on a show you know is going to end soon, and illustrates a basic lack of planning/sanity. They went from $6m/episode (which ain’t cheap) to $30m/episode. And it’s not like more people are going to watch it because of that. It’ll be binged and forgotten more or less immediately.What’s really sad is you don’t need much to keep subscribers. You need about one actually-good show every month or so, maybe a little more often with Netflix’s binge model, but Netflix is nowhere near that. And when they go make a good show, accidentally laser-targeted on “your interests”, they cancel it, either immediately, or after S2.The crackdown they seem to be doing sounds like a more annoying and invasive version of what Apple TV+ does. And what Apple does ensures they’ll never be worth more than £4.99/month. They’re fine for that price, given they also have excellent 4K (far better and less compressed-looking than Netflix’s 4K, I note). But Netflix wants £11.99, more than twice the price, and they’re just not worth it.
Don’t agree on Stranger Things personally – it’s their most-hyped show and investing in it to allow it to stick its ending and leave open the possibility to expand its universe makes a lot more sense than some of Netflix’s other deals. I quite oppositely wish they had 8-10 shows like Stranger Things with mega-budgets to make them clearly stand out. They should be able to afford that when they’re spending $17-18B a year on content.I do think Netflix’s release strategy is bad for them. The drop everything all at once and let people binge really impacts hype and attention for shows IMO. People get excited for a weekend or so and then forget about the show for a year plus until the next one comes out. Entertainment sites often don’t bother writing episodic reviews or articles. Friends and family watch at wildly different paces and discussions of episodes and events are reduced. And shows never get an opportunity to show they can build an audience through good word and critical acclaim either.I also disagree with you on Apple TV+ BTW. I think the key to loyal subscribers is high-quality content above all else. HBO has been successful for a long, long time because they have it. People won’t cancel a service if it has shows they want to watch year round. And Apple TV+, IMO, has a lot of good content for a relatively fledgling service right now.
We get free HBO+ with our ATT cable/internet subscription, and it has by far the best content of any of the platforms. Not even close.
I love their release strategy, it’s the reason I’ve stuck with them over other streaming services (that, and no ads). Now, even on other streamers, I wait for the season to finish, sign up, binge, then cancel.
I know people like it but for the reasons I already gave, it isn’t a sound strategy. And I think it’s bad for TV shows too – I want shows I like to get the maximum attention and ability to garner an audience so they don’t get cancelled. People could still wait for a series to finish and binge all at once if they wanted to.
I don’t know, I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s kept subscribing uninterrupted because of the release strategy. I can see what you’re saying, but if they ever change that strategy, I know I will cancel, so it’s more complicated than all that.
It doesn’t really make any sense to me why you would – the content is exactly the same, your ability to watch it all at once is just delayed by a few weeks. IMO if the content is good and there’s good stuff released regularly, the vast majority of people will stay on. Because having a weekly schedule hasn’t hurt the subscriptions or popularity of other services / shows that have it. Even when shows change their release schedule midway through, as The Boys did on Amazon Prime.
I know this site hates it (because it hates everything), but I really think the new Stranger Things model (which iirc they’ve tried with a few other shows now too) is the way forward: release a batch of episodes to allow binging, but not the whole season, with a few weeks between batches to allow people to talk about the show and catch up with it. There’ll probably be some experimentation for a while regarding batch size and release pacing, but this seems like the best of both worlds.The pure weekly model doesn’t just have the downside of deterring people who want to binge, it has the bigger downside of dissuading people from catching up. Often people feel they have to wait until the end of a season to catch up before the next one (‘event’ shows like GOT showed big leaps in audience between seasons, because of the number who had caught up in the off-season). Making those catch-up periods shorter but more frequent could help a show grow more quickly.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I found a movie I felt like watching on Netflix, and their original content is indeed getting thin. My kids want to watch the final season of Stranger Things but that may be the end of it.
This is exactly right. The question for the business isn’t “Should we make the password sharers pay?” the question is “How many sharers will pay and how many people who currently pay will drop the service?”My mother uses my netflix account and my sister sometimes does as well. If they’re not allowed to use it anymore, they’re just not going to watch Netflix shows. Additionally, I’m much more likely to drop my subscription because I don’t watch it that often.Publicly traded companies don’t have a fiduciary duty to do the “obvious thing”… They exist specifically to exercise discretion. Otherwise they’re just a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) where the company does exactly what the majority of the shareholders vote to do.
“If they’re not allowed to use it anymore, they’re just not going to watch Netflix shows.”
It love that everyone just pretends this is the case. Because nobody likes Netflix, right? That’s why there’s so much sharing, because nobody like Netflix’s content.
You don’t think they’ve ran the numbers for that?
“If it were me, I’d spend more time focusing on how to better use that obscene content budget Netflix has so that people want to be subscribed year round.”Co-sign. The amount of money I routinely see attached to their various shows is astronomical, to the point it almost sounds like government budgeting. “We’re throwing such an astronomical sum at producing this show that it’s almost as if money has no meaning! That’s how committed to it we are!”
“They should have 8-10 hits like Stranger Things with how much they spend but they don’t.”
Yes, because as we all know, quality and popularity is directly related to the amount of money spent.
Absolutely: their job is to maximise their profits, without which they cannot produce anything for anyone (so Barsanti’s mock-outrage is obvious bullshit), but maximising profits isn’t always the same as raising prices. If you raise prices and lose a lot of customers in the process, that can be a net loss in profit. And that’s exactly what this is: it’s doubling or tripling the prices for some of their customers. Specifically, ‘sharing’ has been a scheme that’s allowed Netflix to sell their product at a massive discount to people who would otherwise be too poor or frugal to buy it, while simultaneously being able to sell many fullprice versions to those who can afford it.In my case, for instance, I use someone else’s account. He’s actually been thinking of cancelling it, because he thinks it’s not worth what he pays – until he remembered that I used his account, which persuaded him that between the two of us we probably do use it enough to justify the cost (whether this will unfortunately result in him charging me, splitting the cost (which would be totally justified) is another question…). Likewise, while I’ll watch it for free, and might watch it if I’m paying half the cost of someone else’s subscription, I’m not going to pay full price for it, at least in the current climate. So if they ‘crack down’, they’re essentially doubling the price they charge the pair of us (leaving aside questions of how we split it between us), and the result will be that he will cancel, and I won’t subscribe, and they’ll be getting zero subscription fees out of the pair of us, instead of one between us.They have the right to do this, of course, but I have to suspect that in many cases they’ll do themselves more harm than good financially.
Particularly because subscription services work heavily on habit and word of mouth. If he has Netflix, he’ll tend to keep subscribing out of habit; if I see lots of cool stuff on his Netflix account I might bite the bullet and subscribe myself; and if we both tell our friends about all the cool stuff on Netflix, they too might subscribe. But – now that they can’t command the TV discourse like they could a few years ago – if we both leave Netflix it’ll be hard to tempt us back, and we won’t be doing the job of their marketing department for our friends. Because even if they put a lot of cool stuff on it, we won’t know about most of it anymore. In the current climate, with increasing competition, a subscription service can’t afford to lose momentum, because they may not get it back. There’s a big difference between Netflix being good enough for “well, I want a subscription service, I’ve got Netflix, I’m used to it, I may as well stick with it”, and being good enough for “I’ve been on Disney+ for two years but Netflix sounds so amazing I need to switch!” – a BIG difference.
I pay for four screens at 4K resolution because I had a 55″ UHD television at home and wanted to take advantage of the superior image quality. Unfortunately, it’s bolted to the wall of the living room where I used to live before my ex-wife kicked me out. I have a UHD set at my office where I’m living now as well, so it’s still worth it to me to keep that even if it’s smaller and doesn’t have Dolby Vision….
She said she’d pay for a comparable television to make up for it, but that’s looking less likely the longer separation/divorce proceedings drag out. So if I’m charged extra from Netflix so she can her niece can watch Netflix in different physical locations? Buh-bye, Netflix — they want it, they can pay for it themselves.
The question “what if my kid goes off to school” is particularly naive. I don’t even understand how it’s even a question whether some flat full of 20yo’s should get free Netflix because Kevin’s dad has an account.
If I’m paying for multiple concurrent streams, why should that matter? Whether the content is being streamed in my house or in an apartment across town, I’m already paying Netflix for that stream.
Yeah I was surprised by that too. Isn’t college kids using their parents account a huge part of why file sharing happens? That’s the problem no? Why is Barsanti upset about that?
My parents have 4 kids and all of us went to college in different cities a couple in different provinces. I know I personally used my parents Netflix the entire time I lived on the other side of the country and my friends and room mates benefitted too. I felt like Netflix were suckers despite having myself benefitted from that.
If you 4 college kids weren’t allowed to share the account by some tech means, would you have subscribed? If the point of cutting off sharing is to boost subs, it’s worth asking if that would have actually worked.
Ok, well here’s the problem (as CallsOutBullshit below brings up as well):How many people are only still subbed because there’s three or four people sharing the account, and if they actually could stop password sharing (which they really can’t without tying it to physical location, which is a problem for a bunch of reasons), and how many of them will just drop the service?
Plenty of people have three or four (or more) streaming services because they pay for one and trade passwords with other people. Netflix knows that, and they built the assumption into their business model up until they finally showed a contraction of profits. Not a loss mind you, just less profits. Because in the modern stock market, simply making an obscene amount of money isn’t enough, you have to make a more obscene amount of money than you did last quarter, forever.
So just to be clear, do you also think that everyone who goes to a house party at this flat full of 20 year olds should individually pay for the songs that play on the stereo? Should each 20 year old get their own utility bill? No communal dinners, sharing isn’t allowed!
Yes, to be clear, all of that. It’s all the same and makes exactly as much sense as the actual premise. Food, burnt coal, streamed movies — all the same!
That’s a fun cherry pick. Any thoughts on the music example or does that not fit your witty bon mot?For shits and giggles let’s add another example. If someone in the flat of twentysomethings owned a game system with a couch co-op game would you think everyone needed to buy a copy of the game?The flat wants to go out on the town. Unfortunately they can’t share a ride, they all have to take their own cars. Gotta make sure we support the oil and auto industries!“What’s the Wi-Fi password again?” “Sorry, man. You gotta buy your own router. How else is Spectrum supposed to make a buck?”
“witty bon mot”?
JFC…
You’re not wrong, but at the same time, Netflix had a record 2021 year with something north of $5 billion in net profits, which was like 84% higher YoY. That’s not to say they should give away service, but if they step back and look, they aren’t exactly doing terrible as-is. This is a pre-emptive measure against subscriber loss due to new streaming competition and the younger demographic’s trend of staying off paid subscriptions in favor or Tiktok and Youtube. But it’s a terrible approach. The stick never wins over the carrot, so threats or action against password sharing will probably end up with a net loss of subscribers. They should incentive account upgrades or new accounts that have never held an account before.
They already charge for multiple screens, charging for multiple households seems like double jeopardy to me (and also doesn’t solve the mentioned problem of traveling)
Netflix spent most of its existence saying that they didn’t care if people shared passwords. They factored it into their business model (which might be the only wise thing they did regarding their business model, people being people).Their problem is that they assumed for some idiotic reason that they could continue growing forever. It seems pretty obvious that right now everyone who wants to pay for Netflix is doing so.
The company is still ungodly profitable (1.6B in the first quarter alone). The problem isn’t that they aren’t making money, its the ludicrous, unsustainable system that expects profits to continually increase in perpetuity.
“Their problem is that they assumed for some idiotic reason that they could continue growing forever.”
I like that they’re idiots because you’re pea-brain thinks that’s how corporations work.
Not just increase, but increase exponentially! Netflix is still growing in real terms – if you ignore the political and probably temporary decision to suspend trading in Russia, it’s still adding hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And it has plenty more room to grow around the world, even if not in the US. But unfortunately speculators had utterly insane expectations for it, that it would grow by larger and larger amounts each month.
[c.f. the future crash in Tesla stock prices. We’re at a point where it doesn’t even matter if Tesla becomes a massive, robust car company or not – at the current stock price (even with the recent declines) we’re at a stage where anything less than making and selling every single car in the world within ten years will be seen as a fatal underperformance…]
The company is still ungodly profitable (1.6B in the first quarter
alone). The problem isn’t that they aren’t making money, its the
ludicrous, unsustainable system that expects profits to continually increase in perpetuity.
True of all public companies. It’s an inane system that either requires companies to do the almost impossible, or eventually the market will tear the company to bits and move on to something else.
I’m not in favor of any of this. I just don’t think it should be a shock to anyone.
netflix simps are the weirdest
Where do you have this from
“A huge portion of Netflix users don’t pay for the service”If i pay for 4 streams, and use 4 streams every stream is paid for, no matter the location.
If i use my phone for internet my location is at the nearest tower and not my home anymore.
So location blocking is not a solution i think is usable.
Netflix have recorded record high profits this year, they don’t “need” more money by imposing this stupid restriction. They greedily “want” more. i share with my parents, who wouldn’t buy it otherwise and i pay £15.99 for the privilige, so my household and my parents can watch at the same time if need be. If i get charged for sharing, i’ll either cancel or change to the lowest possible sub price, therefore making netflix lose money not gain any, and i’m guessing many more would do the same which is why they are scared to enforce it and are giving people codes when they complain. i am one of those people that watch netflix out the house, on holiday, on my lunch break, waiting in the car etc if i can’t use my mobile streaming service sub how i would like i have no interest in paying for it and i’ll just torrent anything decent they provide.
Except by these rules, I can’t use my account on vacation or on my break at work or at a friend’s house. Even if no one else in the world has my PW but me, I can only use it at home. Fuck that.
So…what, we’re in favor of people sharing accounts now? At this point just go back to Pirate Bay.
Doesn’t NetFlix already have multitiered plans based on the number of devices you want to be able to stream on?Why wouldn’t they just lock their service to those devices as other services like Norton protection?
Many households have more than four streaming devices – I live by myself and I have six that I regularly use. TVs with Rokus in each bedroom, the kitchen, and the garage besides the living room – and that doesn’t include my phone and a couple of tables. Now think of a family with a bunch of kids!
I’m my home I have 3 TVs, an assortment of tablets, 2 phones, multiple laptops, multiple PCs, consoles, fire sticks, etc. If I’m in a hotel without any of those things I can still log into Netflix on the hotels TV/computer. The point was easy access across all of those devices. Netflix starts locking it down to specific hardware they’re taking out over of the very things that make streaming popular.
Why would you be in a hotel and not have at least one of your 2 phones and/or at least one of your multiple laptops?
Netflix’s biggest plan limits you to 4 screens. His point is, he uses far more than 4 devices. Most people do. Your kid might watch on their computer, or the iPad, or their phone. Across your family you probably only have four people streaming at once, but you could easily have a dozen devices which are sometimes used. You think setting up a massive management burden where people have to constantly register and de-register devices will work out well for Netflix?
Because I rarely want to watch Netflix on my phone. If I’m on a plane or bus to somewhere, fine, but not in a hotel where part of my room cost includes getting netflix/hulu/hbo max on the TV.
Because I’m doing narcotics transactions with shady people . . .
OH! You were asking HIM!
Perhaps you are using said laptop and phone for other purposes while still wanting to stream Big Mouth in the background.
Nobody wants to stream Big Mouth in the background or foreground.
Speaking for myself, I’d rather watch and listen to it on the hotel room’s 60″ than my 15″ laptop.
Maybe you want to watch on the Hotel smart TV and its not setup for casting from your phone? I think limiting the number of streams is good enough and they already do that. Locking to devices would suck for a lot of families.
They’ll soon realise that the best way to restrict the sharing of accounts is by sending you a physical copy of your requested media… content… hangonasecond, that sounds familiar?
Really, to get you that physical media, it would make more sense to have small distribution centers across the country, perhaps one in every neighborhood.
What would be really cool is if you could just go to that small local distribution center and all the movies would just be out and you could just grab the ones you wanted to watch. Maybe they could also have video games and sell snacks too!
With all that, why would you ever leave?
It does indeed. Being able to stream on two devices simultaneously costs more than one … and 4 costs more than two. They ALREADY solved their problem, they are just trying to get more money – basically changing from “we charge if you do this” to “we charge if you want the opportunity to do this … even if you never do”
Personally we have 2 smart TVs, 2 desktop computers, 2 laptops, and 2 cell phones. We’re not going to pay for a 8 person plan if that even exists just for 2 people, for example.
It’s not practical, for a couple of reasons:1) It requires a higher level of technical expertise than a lot of customers possess. It creates a big burden of tech support to try and help users delete old machines (and delete the right ones) and enable new machines. This can be seen very easily because there’s a trash-tier UK streaming service (who unfortunately get ahold of a lot of good shows) called NowTV which does exactly this (or used to), and if you looked at their support section, it was 80% people going “How the hell do I fix this, it won’t let me watch on my [new TV/laptop/phone]??! I’m going to bloody cancel!!!!”. Their one wasn’t even that hard to use, but it was hard enough. If you’re happy with eliminating 90% of your customers over 55, and a good proportion of those under that, yeah, go ahead, but it’s a big loss to take.2) It doesn’t actually solve their problem for tech-savvy users. I’d just enable my TV, my friend’s TV, my mum’s TV, and maybe my laptop. And realistically, with locking, they’d need to increase the number, because locking stuff gets confused real easy. This last point is important – Norton or the like is already accessing what it needs to in order to correctly determine what machine it is on, and to lock to that, and it runs constantly in the background. That’s not how most TVs or Chromecast-type devices work, and it’s not something they really allow for, so you’re going to have to pick between a lot of mistakes or really limiting the devices the product works on. NowTV, for example, chose the latter. They just wiped out entire categories of devices, and force people on PCs (include Macs) to use weird-as-fuck outdated software which is unreliable and buggy, because it’s the only way they can get this “locked to specific machines” thing to work. Even with that, they did have to increase the number of machines (and may have abandoned it entirely, I haven’t used the service for a year or two), because it was basically intolerable how often it got it wrong.
They are also the only streamer that does this. Plus the only one that charges more for better picture quality.
Every streaming service that I have exepreince with (Hulu, HBOMax, Disney+, Apple+) has a concurrent streaming limit (all higher than Netflix, looks like 4-6). It is ludicrous that Netflix charges different prices for different quality since they can presumably get resolution specs from the device side and default to less than 4k with the option for users to change as needed.
I just checked the Netflix website, since I haven’t actually looked at this system in ages. They have 3 subscriptions tiers – Tier 1 allows streaming to 1 device at time, Tier 2 allows streaming to 2 devices, and Tier 3 allows streaming to 4 devices. However, Tier 1 limits supports 480p resolution, Tier 2 supports 1080p, and Tier 3 supports 4k. Since the number of simultaneous users is tied to picture quality, it increases the likelihood that people will pay for Tier 2 or Tier 3 but only stream to one device at a time. Sharing an account ensures that people get what they are paying for.
And honestly restricting the number of streams should prevent rampant account sharing. I think Netflix is just looking for excuses to justify the fact that they are losing money for other reasons(mostly paying to much for shows that not a lot of people are watching)
This feels like a very convoluted method of doing this, and assumes people don’t watch Netflix from wherever they happen to be and not just at home.
I feel like a better method would be to get profiles out from behind the login. Instead, require every profile to have their own Netflix account that could then be linked to a subscription, with a maximum number of accounts linked to one subscription. Then each account can login from wherever they are, regardless of if they are “in the household” or not, and no account can be logged in from more than one place at the same time. Now does this stop people from sharing their login with more people? Nope! But even just throwing up some more hoops and inconveniences would probably discourage the practice among the less tech minded.
No matter what system they come up with they’ll never stop the practice among those who are determined, so instead it should just be about discouraging more casual users without going so far as to make them upset. If it’s a hassle to work around, but still convenient enough to use as intended, I have to imagine the degree of account sharing would diminish significantly, even if a sizable contingent still remained.
(pirate smirk)
The thing is, I bet Netflix got many pirates to actually subscribe to their service, because sometimes “just easier” actually will work and people will pay. Now it’s like the reverse and they’ll make people pirate.Although this might be a smoke show to show shareholders they are trying and never implement it everywhere.
Uhh. People’s IP addresses change fairly regularly. Modem resets, temporary outages, etc. How the hell is this stupid idea supposed to work when IP addresses aren’t locked in like a physical address is? Am I going to have to call Netflix every week or so when my IP address changes?
I can’t count the number of times of the past 10+ years my parents have asked, “Do you still use the Netflix account?” And my answer has typically been either “Yeah” if I’m actively watching a show within the past week but more often “Yeah, sometimes” when I probably haven’t touched it in months.They themselves have watched more than usual on it in the past couple years, but prior to that their use was spotty and even just last week they mentioned running out of things that interested them now that they’d watched Better Call Saul and Ozarks.If Netflix implements this and I can’t use their accounts any longer, it most likely gets cancelled soon after because they’ll lose the subscription safety net of “well even if we’re not using it, maybe they are.” And I’m not picking up another, because there’s plenty else out there and Netflix’s offerings have only consistently bounced downhill over the past decade. They slipped from “that streaming site where you can casually put on episodes of just about anything you like” to a site totally swamped with garbage to the point it’s likely there are things on there you would watch that you’re utterly unaware of because they can’t stop the deluge of content in desperation to get people to watch ANYTHING.We’ve had Netflix long enough that we started out renting DVDs. This policy would be the end, and we haven’t been sharing our account across a half dozen friends; just my parents in one part of the country and me in another. Sharing it between us has 100% been the selling point retaining our account this long.
Password sharing?! Lol, why even? There are hundreds of streaming sites that upload literally every single show and movie released. I fail to see the difference in using a shared password, to using a site that illegally uploads streamable content. We went from paying cable companies $100 a month, to paying 10 different media companies $10/$15 a month. If you want to watch live sports, tack on another ~$50 a month….
I think the reality, at least for me and my friends who share various streaming services, is that if they all start doing this, we will just stop using most of them more than occasionally. Just sign up for a month at a time and binge watch whatever we want, then nuke the subscription until there is enough content to be worth another month or two.
So, I can have it at home but not at my office or my garage or on my phone or on my tablet. Do I really need Netflix???????????????????
Implementation is going to be a bitch to figure out, but yeah, nobody didn’t know sharing your password outside of “your home” was something that wasn’t against Netflix rules. The easiest way to probably do it is to set up a per profile system, and you can have x amount of devices that are linked to a certain profile at any given time, but even then I can see pitfalls in actually getting it to work. Ultimately I have no sympathy for kids who use their parents logins or people trading services, they set the rules of the game for their services, sign up for a month and binge what you want to watch and cancel like most people who can’t afford to be consistent subscribers to something.
What you don’t get is that all possible implementations of this end up with Netflix losing more customers than it gains, and making people think of Netflix as a brand in a negative light.You don’t seem to understand the inverse angle of this, which is that Netflix would never have been able to reach the position of charging the prices they do to the subscriber base they do without this. They’d have maybe half as many subscribers if they priced like this but cracked down on sharing like Apple TV+ de facto does. Or they’d have half the price and the same number of subscribers. And they’re planning on going a lot harder than Apple TV+.Your solution – device locking – is one that’s been tried, and is absolutely dismal and massively lowers the value proposition of a service. It’s a huge pain to manage if you’re not a single person living alone (and it sounds like most of the people who think its a good idea are precisely that). If you’re in middle-class family of say five, it’s demented, because you could easily have 10-15 devices that might be in use at any given time (every adult and kid likely has at least a phone and a laptop), but you’re limited to 4 “locked” devices or whatever. You want to have to constantly go into the account and re-register different devices to let people watch stuff? Does that sound like fun? Sound like it “increases value”? Sound like it would leave you with a positive impression of Netflix?
Tied to a physical location? Umm, have they never heard of phones? Or tablets? Or laptops?
Apparently, the official Netflix stance is that a household is “exclusively people a subscriber lives with” and not a subscriber’s immediate family.This is bad and also dumb. By this idiotic definition, my mother and sister would need to get their own Netflix account despite the fact that they are literally on the same LAN as me. Nevermind the fact that this is a complete shitshow for anyone who—oh, I don’t know—ever leaves their house. 🤨 What is even the point of our paying $21 a fucking month???
Nice way to screw people who travel frequently for work
Last time Netflix tried this, that was exactly who they screwed, and it caused enough of a furore that Netflix had to drop it.
I have one kid in college and soon will have two. Not only am I fine with them using the same Netflix login they have been using at home for almost ten years, but I would actually question why they would pay for it, when I have available streams not being used.
Same. What I did discover, though, is that the one in college and his friends share logins far and wide. One of his hallmates is from Germany and I’ll routinely turn on a show to discover German subtitles are enabled. I cleaned out my Hulu profile after seeing something like 10 people had used it at various times. I think sharing with a dependent is one thing and a bit of a side case relative to what Netflix is trying to do here.
I subscribe to their two-stream plan. In response to the last price increase, I thought about switching to the one-stream, but my oldest who goes to college out of state, they have had classes which assigned watching stuff on Netflix and I didn’t want me bingeing Russian Doll to interfere with their ability to do homework.Now that you mention it, I don’t recall getting emails from Hulu when a new device logs into my account, but Netflix sends them. As far as I know and can tell, my kids haven’t shared our login — though my youngest sometimes streams something via our Netflix to his friends on Discord — but like you, if I were to notice something, I’d either do smething about it or ask them. The same would be true, if I were to get a “too many devices” message from Netflix.
We had this problem with our HBO streaming subscription(whatever they called it before it became HBO Max). We actually got it as part of a cable package and I shared out the access with my niece because she really wanted to watch Game of Thrones. She ended up sharing it with half the family and all her friends. The problem is I use a complex password for everything, so she would share it and other people would inevitably mistype something and lock out the account. So I pulled back and now only share the access with my parents and in-laws. I suppose when my kids go away to college I will have to discuss with them about sharing the Netflix password
Yeah, don’t get me started on the reset rabbit hole I have to go down every time one of my kids fat-fingers a password (including amazon, Apple, etc.). STOP AFTER A SECOND FAILED ATTEMPT. Beyond aggravating.
Maybe I’m a fuddy-duddy, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that if your kid moves out of the house, they should get their own Netflix subscription, same as they get their own water and their own couch and their own food.
It’s great if your kid has their own water, their own couch and their own food, but I don’t know that this can be said about most college students.Many also don’t have their own cars, insurance or cell phone plan.
I’d gladly pay for food, water, insurance, etc. but they can pay for their own streaming service charges.
Yeah, but if the kids couldn’t use our family login, I would definitely unsubscribe. I used to watch a lot of stuff via Netflix, but now unless there’s one certain show such as The Crown, Russian Doll or The Great British Baking Show, Netflix has become more of the place I turn when nothing else is jumping out at me on one of my other services and more often than not, I end up back on one of the other services because there is a reason some things have been in my queue for years.It used to be that I could be tided over with the next installment of Better Call Saul or Wynonna Earp a year late, but now I’m planning to sign up for AMC to binge the first half of Saul’s last season and to watch the ending in real time instead of waiting a year or more for Netflix, and if Wynonna Earp had not ended, I would assume it would go to Peacock now.If it weren’t for the kids and my assumption that they might want to watch Netflix and my hope they aren’t just letting YouTube autoplay mindless crap — I know my daughter watched a couple of things on Netflix last semester because they were assigned for her literature class — I would certainly change to a seasonal subscription. The illusion that somebody in my family might be watching something on Netflix is the only reason I haven’t cancelled now.
I only keep Netflix year round because of password sharing. I don’t want to let down my peeps. Otherwise, I would probably just pay for a month once or twice a year, binge, then cancel the rest of the time. I almost (but not quite) want them to institute it so I can save my money.
Honestly, they should have a base plan that allows two simultaneous users, and then have “add one” for additional users. Not sure why they haven’t revamped their subscription models yet. That way even if people share, $2 a month per additional user is fine.
Thats essentially what they already have implemented. You pay for the amount of streams that can be used at once.
they do
They’re current subscription model ties the number of simultaneous users to the video resolution. If you want to use 4 devices simultaneously you subscribe to the 4k plan, and if you want to watch 4k you subscribe for 4 devices simultaneously. Increasing the number of households subscribing to the service is more lucrative than increasing the number of users.
They already restrict the number of feeds you can have. Personally if I am paying for 4 feeds at a time I should be able to allow anyone to use those.
Netflix is making an issue out of a non-issue. They already limit the number of simultaneous streams so if you have shared your account with several people, you are in jeopardy of not being able to watch your own account. Users have and will police that themselves. If it gets out of hand, change your password and kick everyone off. Netflix can’t sell a ubiquitous streaming service tied to specific locations as that defeats the original premise. If they are not covering their costs sufficiently then they simply need to raise rates.However, it appears that the content owners and studios etc are moving toward a direct delivery approach to their customers in order to cut the middle person out of the mix…streaming providers, CATV providers etc.
Netflix should make deals with hotels where you wouldn’t need to login to your account to use Netflix on the TV. It would be a good way to advertise content to the 3 people on earth who travel but haven’t heard about Netflix, and you get to have your magic “password limiting” system.
Also seems like a great way for Netflix to sell large enterprise-level subscriptions. Think if every Hyatt-affiliated hotel had free Netflix. They’d get paid by Hyatt and likely attract new subscribers.
Like HBO has been doing with motels/Hotels forever.
That works for hotels when traveling, but what about when I’m at the gym or in a cab/on public transport? What if I’m traveling to visit a family member and staying at their house, and they don’t have Netflix? There are plenty of completely reasonable situations in which a single stream user might want to access their account outside of their home and which geolocking access would limit.Setting up access within a hotel would only solve a very small part of this problem.
I was operating under the assumption that cell phones would be treated differently than devices like smart TVs, because yeah there’s no logical way to control their location.
I assumed they would just limit it to physical location the way cable or home internet is limited to location. I know there are ways around that with VPNs I suppose but for the general non-tech public it would prevent a lot of it.
This would prevent people from using phones or mobile devices away from the home, however. To get around that they could allow unlimited devices at your home location and then limit the number of devices away from that location. If you want more “away” devices then you can pay more. Yes, a family could have many devices away from their home location but that isn’t Netflix’s problem. Nothing they implement will be good news for a legitimate, immediate family with a lot of devices being used away from the home location.
Boy, this mess isn’t even fun to watch.
Unlike the Netflix original series Sex/Life.
Gee, if Netflix went under, that would be so sad….
“Basically, the idea seems to be that a Netflix account would be tied to a physical location”
Definitely get annoyed at assumptions that you’ve made.
Sharing wins! GO FUCK YOURSELF, NETFLIX!
I don’t understand why they don’t just charge per stream to fix this “problem.” If you pay for four streams (or whatever the standard is), then you should be able to distribute them as you wish. If they don’t want people sharing, cut the price a bit and limit the subs to one stream.
They aren’t going to cut the price for anything – they want to increase the number of people who are paying to use 4 devices but only actually using 1 or 2.
They already do charge per stream. Its just that the tiers are also tied to resolution so people don’t realize that if you are paying for 4K Netflix you get 4 streams. 1080p gets you 2 and the 480p budget stream gets you one.
I know, but what I was saying was divorce that from the resolution. I assume virtually no one is getting the 480 anymore.
“So even Netflix doesn’t seem particularly concerned with sticking to this system.”
So, do they not care or is it going ReALlY BaDLy?!??!?
It seems like this was a bad idea that shouldn’t have been done.
So what are the odds Netflix management is tanking their service on purpose?
I travel most weeks for work and stream Netflix to my laptop – this would seem to preclude that, so if they try, I’m gone. May leave anyway, but that would be a definite.
Come on people. Every single one of you knows exactly what the deal is. Of course a ‘household’ is tied to a physical location where the subscriber or their family lives. Obviously, the account should still be viewable outside of that physical location (and will – Netflix isn’t going to take that away, you freaks), but it does mean that your adult children who live on their own, or your senior citizen parents, or your cousin who lives in Kansas, or your coworker who wants to watch Bridgerton, will have to get their own damn account. And sorry to be the one backing up the evil corporation here, but… why shouldn’t they? Like, if a streaming platform wants to turn a blind eye to password-sharing, I’m certainly not going to complain. But I’m also not going to complain if they *don’t*, because… that’s just how it works.
Imagine going to a movie theater and buying 4 tickets to a movie, but your 3 friends/family members who don’t live with you, aren’t allowed to sit in those seats because they aren’t part of your “household” and they need to each buy 4 seats as well.Now tell me that it’s not stupid.
I agree – your example, in which a movie theater insists that each patron buy four tickets to see a movie, does indeed sound stupid.
If you want to watch in 4K you are required to buy “4 tickets” (or streams), even if you only use the service for yourself.
According to the Netflix terms of service, you aren’t even allowed to let people visiting your house watch your Netflix. It says nothing of passwords; you aren’t allowed to let non-household members access any content (without them also buying 4 tickets each).
4.2. The Netflix service and any content accessed through the service
are for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared
with individuals beyond your household.
I’ve already solved my issue with them by streaming on no devices. If they need more customers, sounds like that’s their problem now
Reasons other than password sharing that Netflix is losing subscribers:
* Financial situations changing and people having to cut out non-necessities they can no longer afford
* Losing specific shows/movies to other streaming services
* Not realizing Stranger Things was a once-in-a-lifetime stroke of lightning and holding every other original show they create to the impossibly high “immediate hit out of the gate or you’re cancelled” standard
* People cancelling their subscriptions because the one show they watched on Netflix (I hear Ozark cited a lot) is over
* Treating animation like garbage, either cancelling highly hyped projects or making animation studios work on three shows a year, screwing over the fans who have to wait for a third of a season every six months
I’m occasionaly using my sister’s password who leaves directly downstairs from me in the same apartment building just to watch Spanish shows to help me with my Spanish. Her daughters spend the summer with me in my summerhouse and they are the ones who mainly watch. I don’t mind if i don’t have access to Netflix, but i don’t think it would be fair for the kids not to use their family account while vacationing.
They essentially want to remove the feature of “accessing your library from anywhere” without actually saying as much. It’s obvious that their goal is to limit the service to a particular location. Similar to how cable works. So “extenuating circumstances” such as moving or going on vacation aren’t actually extenuating circumstances. Those are circumstance violations, as far as they are concerned.And even if they are granting passes a or not enforcing it, that only means that they are preying on the folks that don’t have the forethought to call and complain.