It looks like many consumers are sticking with Netflix despite the streaming giant’s password crackdown. The company added 5.9 million new subscribers in Q2 —the same quarter it began broadly preventing users from sharing their accounts.
In an earnings report, Netflix said the “cancel reaction was low” in response to the crackdown. Instead, more users have signed up for the paid sharing option, and the company’s ad-supported plan, which costs $6.99 per month in the US.
The paid sharing option, at an additional $7.99 per month, lets a user outside the subscriber’s household stream from the same Netflix account. The company has rolled it out to over 100 countries, and Netflix says, “revenue in each region is now higher than pre-launch, with sign-ups already exceeding cancellations.”
“While we’re still in the early stages of monetization, we’re seeing healthy conversion of borrower households into full paying Netflix memberships as well as the uptake of our extra member feature,” the company added. “We are revenue and paid membership positive vs. prior to the launch of paid sharing across every region in our latest launch.”
The earning report also says Netflix saw growth across all regional markets, including the US and Canada, where it added nearly 1.2 million subscribers. In addition, Netflix is forecasting user and revenue growth will continue in Q3.
But in some bad news for the freeloading crowd, the company says it’s expanding the account-sharing crackdown to all remaining markets starting today. “In these markets, we’re not offering an extra member option given that we’ve recently cut prices in a good number of these countries (for example, Indonesia, Croatia, Kenya, and India),” the company said. But users will be able to transfer their profiles to a new or existing Netflix account.
In the same earnings report, Netflix also revealed the most watched shows and movies of all time on the platform, including the number of views they received. Squid Game leads the pack for TV shows, while Red Notice grabbed the most movie viewers.