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Businesses Television

Netflix Plans Price Increase as Password-Sharing Crackdown Boosts Subscriber Growth (wsj.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the everything-getting-expensive dept.
Netflix said its effort to limit password sharing led to a 10.8% rise in subscriptions in the third quarter, a better-than-expected result that comes as the company plans to increase some prices in the U.S. and other markets. From a report: The streaming giant added 8.8 million subscribers in the third quarter with customer growth in every region, its largest quarterly customer gain since the second quarter of 2020. The company plans to immediately raise prices for its basic plan in the U.S., which is no longer available to new customers, to $11.99 from $9.99 and up the cost of its premium plan to $22.99 from $19.99.

It is also increasing some prices in the U.K. and France, though the cost of its ad-supported and standard ad-free plans are unchanged. The price increases are a sign of streamers' efforts to improve profitability and wean consumers off the low monthly subscription fees that drew users away from pricey cable bundles in the early days of streaming.
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Netflix Plans Price Increase as Password-Sharing Crackdown Boosts Subscriber Growth More

Netflix Plans Price Increase as Password-Sharing Crackdown Boosts Subscriber Growth

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  • The reality underneath (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:07PM (#63937355)

    Interest rates are up, money is no longer effectively free. Heavily indebted IT companies who focused on "growth" instead of "profit" are either going bust, or shifting focus to "profit" to survive and be able to pay off the debtors.

    This is going to happen across the entire industry sooner or later, depending on specific of debt each company is in.

    • Re:The reality underneath (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:11PM (#63937375) Homepage
      Carrying debt is now a burden, all I can say is it is about fucking time.
      • Inflation is too high because of Washington, and Washington only. We are expanding the money supply (quantitive easing) too fast for the underlying economy to keep pace. Dollars are depreciating vs the goods and services they represent. Everything costs more.

        • You know inflation at these rates are happening all over the world and not just the United States, right?

          • Fun fact, last night US Debt increases by 100 Billion. Overnight. Biden, who pledged 100 Billion support package to Ukraine and Israelis giving speech tonight about Ukraine and Israel. Coincidence? Still not sure why inflation happens?

            • I heard from some fine people that Donald Trump wanted a 200 billion payment for being an ex-president with secret information.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Ksevio ( 865461 )

              Fun fact, the US president doesn't control spending so Biden needs to get the money approved by congress through a bill that has to be passed with bi-partisan support.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rhipf ( 525263 )

              That's like saying my bank account increased by $1000000 because I decided to buy a lottery ticket.
              A president pledging money to a cause is a hollow statement since the money can only be allocated by congress. If the money is taken from already allocated funds (by moving money from other projects) then it wouldn't increase the debt (since the money is already factored in).

            • Fun fact, the rest of the G7 are at least as bad. Quite sure that inflation is happening for OIL reasons.
          • Washington, and only Washington is the reason why bread and wood costs more in Albania.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by taustin ( 171655 )

            Is it your claim that no other government is printing money like there's no tomorrow to support a leftist welfare state?

          • If the USA prints money it forces other countries to print money so that their exports don't become too expensive. Dollars are also shipped all over the world, printing infinite trillions is enough to blanket the planet.
        • So Russia's 7% / year and England's 8% is Biden's fault?
          Are you that deluded?

    • Re:The reality underneath (Score:5, Informative)

      by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:32PM (#63937423) Homepage
      This is exactly correct. Start making a profit or go out of business already.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      I'm beginning to think that we need to re categorise Netflix, i think they are much more of a content creation and distribution company than a technology company these days. Ok rhey run some prity big dcs and ( as far as I know) a prity big private wan but tgat is not their core buisness, so should we really call them a tech company?

  • There goes that 8% (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:11PM (#63937377)

    Their new programming is total shit.

    Time to drop them for a year and see if they fix that.

    • That's the good thing about over-the-top streaming channels. At least you can cancel them easily.

      I am definitely at the point of peak streaming subs though. If I want to subscribe to one, I have to drop another.

  • Price Increase (Score:3)

    by kellin ( 28417 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:13PM (#63937383)

    Surprise surprise. Got more money, lets artificially increase it more. Just glad I'm on T-Mobile so I get a free account. Yeah, I know, t-mobile, but so far I havent had any identity theft issues from their hacks.

    • Re:Price Increase (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:24PM (#63937409) Homepage Journal

      > Got more money, lets artificially increase it more.

      I'm old enough to remember when they said they had to make sure everybody was paying their fair share so they wouldn't have to raise prices for everybody, about the password 'crackdown'.

      And old enough to not have believed them.

      • >old enough to not to trust them

        100%. I learned to never trust netflix and to never to never give them another dollar after they wiped everyone's balances when they abandoned the $1/DVD model for subscription.

      • Exactly, and not only did they not increase the prices, they used the crackdown as a reason to increase the prices. "If people are sharing passwords, we will increase the prices" but also "If people are not sharing passwords, we will increase the prices".
    • "Just glad I'm on T-Mobile so I get a free account. "

      For how long?

      When T-Mobile took over Sprint they took away:
      Amazon Prime
      Tidal
      Hulu

      And we got:
      Netflix
      Apple TV+ (Woopie! I don't own 1 Apple device!)
      Pandora (Briefly, then they took that away)

      As soon as the price goes up on Netflix - watch if T-Mobile doesn't end our free Netflix accounts.

  • The last straw (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:18PM (#63937399) Journal

    Just sent a group SMS to my family telling them to get whatever they have on their saved lists watched, because we're canceling in a few weeks. I'm tired of their crappy "original" content anyway (which are mostly just foreign network shows that are dubbed in English). They don't really have a good selection of movies anymore, so now's a good time to chop that expense from the family budget. As far as I'm concerned, Netflix has cut their own throat.

    • Re:The last straw (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HBI ( 10338492 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:39PM (#63937433)

      Cancelled mine last month after almost 20 years. I was deriving little value. Enshitification had destroyed the utility of it, probably many years ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Cancelled mine last month after almost 20 years. I was deriving little value. Enshitification had destroyed the utility of it, probably many years ago.

        I cancelled mine 7 years ago when they started trying to enforce region blocks. Couldn't be arsed with VPNs so I went back to the old ways and haven't looked back.

        Yo ho ho.

    • Yeah, I'm gonna have this same conversation with the wife and kid tonight. I had stayed subscribed because they both insisted they needed Netflix; but they're not actually watching a damn thing on there. Same thing with my wife's BritBox add-on to Prime, which I'm pretty sure she's not watching at all.

      They will go into the rotation, where Paramount+, Max, Hulu, etc. etc. already live. Subscribe to a few at a time for a couple months, watch the small amount of content that we actualy care about... then rotat

      • Change all the passwords, and see who notices.

      • I wanted to leave, but my wife likes a couple of shows that we could easily find on the high seas. Anyway, history told me I wasn't going to win that argument, so I grudgingly still have Netflix, which was great in 2016 and a big bag of trash now.

    • As far as I'm concerned, Netflix has cut their own throat.

      And yet subscriber count is up. Maybe your viewing habits or your interaction with companies differs greatly from the norm. There's nothing pointing towards any throats being slit.

  • Okay, first of all stop spending money on absolutely awful shows that everyone hates. That could be the double digits in the margin they're shooting for right there.
    But anyway, since they're not going to do that, I assume the thinking at this point is if the remaining customers haven't cancelled it at this point, nothing will make them do so. It's gotta be literally dead people, morons, and rich people with massive FOMO and zero taste in media.

    • When Netflix came along, they did DVDs better than Blockbuster. Then they started streaming video. Once content creators saw that happening, they all wanted their own platform and to see the profits roll in.

      The problem is that no one wants to pay all these nickel and dime fees and then run different apps to access the stuff.

      Netflix is more or less a dead man walking unless the market unbalkanizes. I won't be holding my breath. It took 20 years for the music industry to pull its collective head out of it

    • Okay, first of all stop spending money on absolutely awful shows that everyone hates.

      I completely agree with your premise, but I getting Netflix subscribers to agree on what constitutes an awful show is where the premise falls apart.

      I, for example, thought Squid Games was the most awful show in years, and would have happily given it the axe. Based on the entertainment Press, it appears I was in very small minority.

  • I don't get it. They are already making 18% net profit, how much more do they need? At this point they only reason they are raising prices (again) is because they feel like they can with impunity. Netflix is already one foot out the door and another on a banana peel, it's getting harder and harder to justify the expense.

  • Makes perfect logical sense. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @01:32PM (#63937425)

    The increased the subscriber base by cracking down on the users. This increased profits. The immediate corporate reaction to such news would absolutely be, "Hey, despite all the whining, they didn't flee. We smacked 'em around good and they're sticking around. Let's start raising prices and see how much more they'll take."

    And I doubt this increase will be the last one. I suspect the increases to come every few months to few weeks now, depending on how much they think they can get by with. I'm trying to remember the last time I was impressed by something I watched on Netflix. Probably time to do the ol' buh bye. It's not like there aren't seventeen billion other streaming services to choose from. Some of them even have some decent content, if you can find it.

    • Cable companies used to believe they could increase prices with impunity as well. You can do that for a while, but eventually, a competitor comes along and steals your unhappy customers.

  • Yup - NO. Just cancelled. First they raised the price, so I lowered my "Quality" Then they dropped all the quality shows. Then they made me jump through hoops to 'prove' my two TV's were in the same "home" Now they want to raise the price again, with no place to go without watching ads to keep my current spend equal. No thanks! I'm already paying $$ for programming - and now you still want me to pay but pay for ads? NOPE!
  • I do it and have no issues. But I also don't watch it all that often. What they did was identify heavy users who were sharing passwords with other heavy users. People they know would miss the service.

    I guess it's a smart way to do it. I was going to cancel the moment I got my first crackdown pop up. Was kind of looking forward to saving the $17/mo. As it stands the rest of the family watches it just enough that I've kept it around. Which is what they wanted, and it annoys me to no end they have enough d

  • Most people I know are only subscribing for 1 month at a time to watch a specific series. There hasn't been anything interesting to me for over a year. Why is this crap stock up?

  • Netflix needs to fix its tiers (Score:4, Informative)

    by sixsixtysix ( 1110135 ) on Thursday October 19, 2023 @06:35PM (#63938075)
    Netflix, afaik, is the only one that charges more to access 4k content.
    They do it by only offering it in the highest plan, so a single gets screwed.
  • Netflix obviously feel that they are in a secure enough position that they can keep rolling out above-inflation rises. As a warning, there are plenty of alternatives, too many in fact. Netflix has aimed itself squarely at the mass-market - I would say that the average IMDB score of Netflix films would be lower than, for example, Prime or Disney. Would love to see some proper data analysis!

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