Do you share your Disney Plus password with anyone? Now’s the time that you should start telling them they’re going to have to stop, before they start getting involved in a long-running series. Disney has said its password sharing clampdown begins in just a few weeks, in June.
In an interview with CNBC, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that the company wants to turn streaming into a growth business.
Disney Plus arguably has one of the most exciting program ranges of all the streamers, with comprehensive Disney movies and shows, obviously, plus all the Marvel Studios and Star Wars content you could want. And then there’s amazing programming like Only Murders in the Building which, in the U.K. comes in the Star line-up on Disney Plus. If you ask me, this show is worth the subscription price on its own. In the U.S., this is part of Hulu and as you may know, a combined Disney Plus and Hulu app is now available.
Anyway, Iger said that password sharing restrictions are on their way. In “just a few countries in a few markets,” Iger said, the company will be “launching our first real foray into password sharing,” in June.
If that sounds like you might not need to worry just yet, think again. Iger also went on to say that the clampdown would expand to all subscribers in just a few months after that, by September.
The password-sharing rules were introduced for all new subscribers at the beginning of the year and then extended to existing subscribers in March.
Netflix took a similar route last year, and the way it worked was that subscribers who allowed an extra person to share their account would be charged an extra $7.99 a month.
When it was introduced, many subscribers cancelled, but within months, Netflix reported increased income and higher subscriber numbers. Disney will be hoping for something similar.
In February, the company’s CFO, Hugh Johnston, warned that subscribers who were suspected of sharing improperly would receive a prompt to sign up for their own account, and that subscribers would be offered the chance to sign up others outside their household for an additional fee.
And that’s all we’ve been told so far, with no more details of how it will work, how much any additional fee might be or anything else.
What we do know is that changes are coming and they’ll arrive for some subscribers soon, in June.
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