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After beginning to crack down on password sharing earlier this year, Netflix has reportedly seen a record number of sign-ups to their streaming service in recent months.
According to data from the research company Antenna, Netflix averaged 73,000 daily sign-ups from May 25 to May 28th, which is a bigger subscriber spike than the one that happened in tandem with the initial pandemic lockdown back in March and April of 2020.
As a result, Netflix has seen “the four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019.”
On May 23, Netflix began notifying U.S. customers that users on their accounts who live outside their households would need to be added as an “extra member” (or get their own subscriptions). Since then, Netflix has had the four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019, when Antenna first began tracking the metric. [via Variety]
The reports of Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown being a success come about a year after the company reported a net subscriber loss for the first time in a decade.
As for what Netflix’s new password-sharing policy entails, users must pay an extra $7.99 per month for an “extra member”, which is defined as someone who doesn’t live with the account holder but uses their account anyway.
As of March 2023, Netflix is estimated to have 232M subscribers worldwide, which makes it the biggest streaming service in the world. Rounding up the top three are Amazon Prime Video with 200M subscribers and Disney+ with 157M subscribers.
Lower down in the rankings are familiar favorites such as The Artist Formerly Known As HBO Max with 82M subscribers, Paramount+ with 60M, Hulu with 48M, and AppleTV+ with 40M.
Currently, Netflix offers a variety of subscription plans, with the cheapest being the ad-supported tier for $6.99 per month. There’s then the basic tier for $9.99 per month, the standard tier for $15.49 per month, and the premier tier — which comes with the ability to add two extra members — for $19.99 per month.