Netflix's password-sharing crackdown is pushing the company to new heights
Netflix claims that its password-sharing crackdown is working and it has the numbers to back it up. The company published its latest earnings report on Wednesday for the second quarter of 2023, which provides a rare look behind the scene.
In the quarter, Netflix managed to gain an additional 5.9 million subscribers. Each of the four reporting regions saw an increase of at least 1 million paid memberships. Year-on-year growth rose from 4.9% to 8% as a consequence. Revenue reached $8.2 billion, a meager gain of $17 million over the first quarter of 2023, slowing year-on-year growth to 2.7%.
Operating income, on the other hand, increased by $113 million to $1.827 billion; this also affected the operating margin, which rose to 22.3%.
Netflix launched a number of changes to its platform in recent time. It enforced account sharing policies, widely reported as Netflix's password-sharing crackdown, aiming to limit use of Netflix to single households. New paid account slots were added to allow paying Netflix customers to add more slots to their accounts to allow access in different households.
Netflix introduced an ad-powered plan, which it upgraded shortly thereafter as it was generating more revenue than the more expensive Basic plan. Netflix renamed the plan to Standard with Ads and upgraded the plan's capabilities as a consequence.
Account-sharing restrictions will launch in all remaining Netflix regions according to Netflix's outlook in the report. These regions will not get the options to add extra member slots to their accounts according to Netflix.
Netflix is offering four plans currently in most regions: Basic, Standard with Ads, Standard and Premium. The company removed the Basic plan in Canada recently, and a new report suggests that it has now also removed the plan in the United States and United Kingdom.
The change does not affect existing Basic plan subscribers, but new subscribers and subscribers who want to change their plan can no longer select the Basic option. This makes the cheapest Netflix plan without advertising more expensive, as users from the United States now have to pay at least $15.49 and users from the United Kingdom £10.99 per month for uninterrupted viewing.
The move makes Netflix's ad-supported plan even more attractive, price-wise, considering that it is available for a monthly price of $6.99 in the United States and £4.99 in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, Netflix subscribers in the US pay more to add an account sharing slot to their paid account than they would for the ad-supported plan.
Netflix's non-ad plans include features that the ad-supported plan does not offer. Both support the downloading of content on devices and access to all content. Some movies and TV shows are unavailable for Standard with ads users.
Closing Words
Netflix has not announced plans regarding the removal of the Basic tier yet, but the rollout to additional regions is an indicator that it could very well ax the plan in all regions eventually.
While there has been a lot of outcry over Netflix's password-sharing crackdown and the launch of an ad-support plan, it appears that the strategy is working for Netflix.
Now You: do you have streaming subscriptions?
Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?
Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.
Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.
huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.
yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.
Error:
Buidling font Cache pop-up
Solution:
Open VLC player.
On Menu Bar:
Tools
Preferences
(at bottom – left side)
Show settings — ALL
Open: Video
Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”
Save
Exit
Re-open – done.
Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts
Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc
Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.
@Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.
Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?
I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…
/thanks
/j
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,
@ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.
No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure
Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me
I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).
Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?