A new survey reveals that more than half of Netflix subscribers share their password with someone outside their home, including friends and family. The streaming giant, which increased the prices of its most popular and premium plans just last week, is known for being the home of a considerable amount of original and licensed content. With many subscribers, said to be close to 200 million worldwide currently, Netflix is easily the most popular and widely known streaming service on the planet.
From humble beginnings in the late 1990s, when the company was a DVD mailing service, Netflix has grown into one of the most prominent players in Hollywood. They've attracted a range of diverse talent, from Adam Sandler, who has made seven original features with the streamer, to Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese. They've even worked with indie darlings like Noah Baumbach, whose Marriage Story was one of the best movies of 2019, and Charlie Kaufman. But despite the massive numbers of subscribers, Netflix can conceivably claim even larger numbers of viewers, thanks to password sharing.
A new survey, commissioned by Kill The Cable Bill, says that more than half of the 1,003 Netflix subscribers they spoke to admit they share their password with someone outside of their immediate family or with a child who no longer lives in their home. The results were broken down into passwords shared with friends (17.7%), a family member not in their immediate family (25.6%), a child no longer living at home (9.2%), and those who don't share their password (47.5%). You can see a graph listing the results below:
The sample size may not be entirely accurate, but it's large enough that the results can be assumed to be a general guide to what the reality is, give or take a few percentage points. What it reveals, then, is that 50% more people have access to Netflix than the streamers' subscriber numbers indicate. That's a minimum number, too, as some password-sharers may also be sharing with multiple people, not just one. That makes Netflix's dominance of the streaming space seem even more impressive, though, of course, similar surveys on the service's major rivals would need to be conducted to see what levels of password-sharing are involved there.
Regardless, though, one thing is abundantly clear. If Netflix were to limit password use to a single network in the future, many people are likely to lose access. There's no sign Netflix is planning to do that any time soon, but if it does happen, it would be interesting to see if subscriber numbers suddenly jump or not. While there are no plans to limit password use soon, the streaming giant may be forced to at some point if subscription numbers drop drastically, as they recently threatened to do during the Cuties movie backlash.
Source: Kill The Cable Bill