Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Netflix Password Sharing: Is It Piracy?

An article by MarketWatch includes comments from Goldman Sachs Analyst Heath Terry, who suggests the possible intent of Netflix behind targeting the HD plan. “We believe a targeted price change like this is designed to reduce excessive password sharing by incentivizing users to switch to the 1-screen plan,” Terry said.

The price of both single screen streaming plans and the two-screen HD plan is the same at $7.99. An important question is whether password sharing outside the home is really a piracy threat to major companies like Netflix.

The answer to this is no, but this does not mean that it is not prevalent, the report says. In a study earlier this year, Parks Associates found that nearly 57% of the U.S. households access an over-the-top video account, which could be Netflix, Hulu or HBO Go, but 11% of Netflix, 10% of Hulu Plus and 5% of Amazon Prime Instant Video subscribers make use of an account for which payments are made by someone else.

From the article "Netflix Password Sharing: Is It Piracy?" by Aman Jain.

Previously In The News

Epix Enters the Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Fray

Though Epix is trying to take advantage of this trend as a portion of consumers self-bundle with video, the challenge will be to ensure that Epix is part of that bundle. A recent study from Parks Asso...

Pirates Poised to Pluck More From Pay-TV, OTT

"Piracy is a complex issue that cannot be addressed with a single solution or by targeting a single use case," said Brett Sappington, senior research director and principal analyst at Parks Associates...

New Route to New Revenue: Detect & Respond to Credentials Sharing

Credentials sharing is not a new problem for service providers. As the OTT and pay-TV landscapes continue to evolve to accommodate entertainment on multiple devices, credentials sharing has followed s...

Mozilla Trumpets Altered Reality Browser

Virtual reality needs its own kind of Web browser because the Web currently is designed for 2D, said Hunter Sappington, a researcher with Parks Associates. "As solutions like Mozilla's become more...