If the pressure on accounting policy from Wall Street sounds familiar, it should. Streaming services have often turned a blind eye to account sharing during their periods of growth, only to return the leniency when viewers are hooked. Netflix tweeted in March 2017 that “Love shares a password” before launching their own enforcement policy in May 2023. Later that year, Netflix raised prices by up to 17 percent, and by April 2024, the company saw the policy pay off with 9.3 million added subscriptions and a 54 percent bump in operating income. Netflix is not alone in the practice, as competitors such as Max (now again HBO) and Disney + / Hulu eventually followed suit with their own policy enforcement.
Goldman’s report argues that while family plans are great for getting subscribers to the platform, “the per-user monetization of these plans materially lags individual plan prices. In our view, these plans offer a greater value proposition to consumers than the standard individual tier, which we believe gives DSPs the opportunity to capture more value through higher price increases, without planning family plans or by definition to plan. demand.” In short, analysts are confident that music streaming services like Spotify can enforce strict account policies, raise prices and still make more money.
So when you go to load your favorite playlist on a shared account, you might soon get a warning that it’s time to check in with your plan manager. If that’s physically impossible to do within seven days, you might have to look into an alternative streaming service — or start digging through drawers until you find that old iPod.