With revenue growth down, the company plans on testing ways to get some existing users to pay up for the freeloading.
Netflix estimates that over 100 millions households are freeloading off the video-streaming service through password sharing, including over 30 million households in the US and Canada. The company supplied the estimate as Netflix announced it’s going to start coming up with ways to entice some people to pay up even more. In a Tuesday letter to shareholders released alongside its quarterly results, Netflix acknowledged struggles to grow its paid user base, and reported a rare drop in total user subscriptions, from 221.8 million in Q4 to 221.6 million in this year’s first quarter. “Our relatively high household penetration—when including the large number of households sharing accounts—combined with competition, is creating revenue growth headwinds,” Netflix wrote in the letter.
