It was a matter of time before Max also joined the crusade against the shared accounts. Netflix and Disney+ have been doing it for a long time, which has prompted other streaming platforms to follow the same path.
The latest information comes to us from the recent presentation of Warner Bros. Discovery’s quarterly results. Gunnar Wiedenfels, the US group’s chief financial officer, has said that the plan against account sharing will begin “in the coming months”.
Max opts for a gradual approach
Wiedenfels has also provided other interesting details. He noted that the measures will begin with the sending of “very soft messages” to users who share their accounts. We will have to wait to know the exact content of those messages, but we have some clues.
The executive described the measures against account sharing as “a form of Price gouging.” The reason behind this concept? As he explained to shareholders, it is because members of several households will be asked “to pay a little more.”
The strategy that Warner is adopting with Max reminds us of that of Netflix, which began sending “Your device is not part of the Home” messages to some users, inviting them, precisely, to pay more either with a new account or adding an additional subscriber to the original account.
In the same conversation with shareholders, Warner CEO David Zaslav clearly said that the group is trying to get more revenue. One way to do this is by preventing Max subscribers from sharing their accounts with friends or family who live outside the main household.
We will have to wait a little longer to find out how Max’s new scheme with shared accounts will work and, very importantly, when it will arrive in Europe. Initial tests are usually carried out in a few countries and then they expand to the rest of the market.
In any case, the crusade against Max’s shared accounts is on the horizon and everything seems to indicate that it will end up arriving sooner or later. It should be noted that this comes in a context where the era of subscriptions seems to be approaching a collapse.
Images | Warner Bros. Discovery
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