The Walt Disney Company doubled the price of a Disney+ streaming subscription in 2023, but it is far from finished finding new ways to charge customers more.

For years, Disney+, Netflix, Max, Amazon Prime Video, and all the rest of the major streaming platforms have had one huge thorn in their sides: password sharing. Although it was always technically against service agreements, many subscribers regularly let people outside of their households (however one might define that) use their accounts, causing mega-corporations to fret about all the payment fees they were not receiving.
Now, those companies are finally hitting back against password sharing, cracking down on users who pay for their service but allow other people to watch content on them. Netflix led the charge with this, first tentatively testing it out in various international markets and finally bringing new restrictions and penalties to subscribers in the United States in May 2023.

CEO Bob Iger has described this as “inspiring,” and now the Disney password sharing crackdown is commencing. While it may outrage many consumers (and the company reportedly lost a staggering 1.3 million subscribers in a single quarter because of it), Disney is not backing down. Instead, it is offering to charge customers even more.
Related: Disney+ Loses Over 1 Million Subscribers After Raising Prices
In a recent earnings call, Disney CFO Hugh Johnston addressed the account-sharing issue, revealing new plans to deal with consumer backlash. Johnston said, “[B]eginning this summer, Disney+ accounts suspected of improper sharing will be presented with new capabilities to allow their borrowers to start their own subscriptions.”
While it is difficult to know how that will actually look on the consumer end, it sounds like Disney+ subscribers who share passwords will likely start getting emails or pop-ups saying, “Does this mysterious person using your account want to set up their own?”

However, Johnston continued to the real meat of things, saying, “Later this calendar year, account holders who want to allow access to individuals from outside their household will be able to add them to their accounts for an additional fee.”
Related: Disney+ Removes Millions of Users, Fans Outraged
In other words, the plan is to allow Disney+ streaming service subscribers to share their passwords and accounts for an extra charge. This sounds roughly analogous to popular family phone plans that establish a single account with a certain number of lines, and then charge for additional lines to be added to it.
It will have to remain to be seen whether this will mollify Disney+ subscribers enough to prevent more mass exoduses from the service. Likely, a lot of it will depend on how much that “additional fee” is; depending on the service tier, an individual Disney+ account can cost as much as $13.99 a month. If the company charges less than that for a new user, a lot of people might just swallow their anger and pay to be added to their buddy’s account.
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