In early 2022, Netflix stock fell 20 percent.

The reason?

The streaming giant reported an expected growth of 2.5 million users in the first quarter of the year.

In the same period in 2021, that figure was 4 million.

As user growth has stalled, the power giant is now testing new ways to increase revenue.

In Chile, Peru and Costa Rica, a new system is now being introduced to make it more difficult to share accounts with other people.

The pilot project is based on charging to add more user profiles to their account.

The function allows the subscriber to add two people outside the household and costs approximately SEK 30 / month in addition to the original monthly cost.

Whether the concept will be rolled out globally is still unclear.

"They have no other sources of income"

The concept of paying to share an account is one of a series of recent changes that Netflix has made.

Between October 2020 and March 2022, the company has increased its monthly cost in the US market three times.

And in December 2021, the price was also raised in Sweden.

According to Jonas Birmé - who is a streaming expert at the technology company Eyevinn - the changes signal that competition is increasing and that Netflix is ​​shifting its focus towards current users, instead of acquiring new ones.

- They have no other sources of income.

If you look at their competitors, for example, Apple, Disney and Amazon are not as dependent on growing in the number of subscriptions as Netflix, says Jonas Birmé.

It is possible that other services will follow suit

Birmé adds that the change is not unexpected because the competing services already have restrictions on account sharing.

Nevertheless, the concept may affect the streaming market.

- If Netflix experiments are received well, it is possible that we will see similar functions in the other services.

Netflix: "Confusion Occurred" 

Netflix has previously been positive about users sharing passwords and accounts with each other.

In a tweet from 2017, the company writes that "Love is sharing passwords".

So now they turn to the question.

The company refrains from commenting on when the new system may come into force in other markets and how they view competition.

According to Netflix, the test was introduced after a period of misunderstanding by users.

- We have always made it easy for people living in the same household to share a Netflix account with features such as separate profiles and the possibility of multiple streams at the same time.

But there has been confusion about when and how people can share - and as a result, accounts are shared today between different households, the company writes in an email to Kulturnyheterna.

In the clip above, you can hear Birmé about Netflix's new password strategy.