By Gavin Boyle
Max is slowly rolling out a password crackdown and has debuted a new way to add a member outside of a user’s household for a lower price than a normal subscription.
“Extra Member Add-On and Profile transfer are two key Max advancements, designed to help viewers with a new way to enjoy our best-in-class content at an exceptional value, and offer subscribers greater flexibility in managing their accounts,” said JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) CEO of Global Streaming and Games.
“These updates provide a simple way for subscribers to add-on a new member to their account, or for existing subscribers who have users outside of their household to smoothly, and in an uninterrupted fashion, transition their profile so that [an] extra member can continue to access Max,” Perrette continued.
The feature, which mirrors a similar system introduced by Netflix after its password crackdown, allows Max to monetize the users who are currently password sharing by charging a reduced subscription price for users outside the home to continue to have access to the platform. The Extra Member features will cost $7.99 per month, compared to Max’s most basic ad-tier costing $9.99 per month. Max subscribers will be allowed to add up to one Extra Member per account.
This feature comes as WBD plans to crack down on password sharing in an effort to boost profits. Last December, the company announced it would be rolling out systems to crack down on password sharing throughout 2025.
Related: What to Know About Max Password Crackdown Coming Next Year
“This is an art and a science to try and tighten the filter of who’s in there. We’ll start some early messaging with some people who we think are in the higher tier of usage,” Perrette previously said. “We will offer a way to essentially add a member, starting in the first quarter [of 2025]. We will then start gradually as we get the data and start figuring out, with some explicit and implicit signals, how good we are at detecting [password sharing]. And then as we go through ‘25, you’re going to see the filters get tighter and tighter.”
If the password crackdown goes as planned, Max can expect it to boost its subscriber numbers by millions. When Netflix rolled out its password crackdown in 2023, it saw its subscriber numbers jump to 29.5 million, much higher than the annual average of 21 million in 2020-22, per Variety. Though WBD hopes for a similar outcome, Perrette has been careful to temper expectations and help investors understand they don’t expect nearly as much of a jump.
“I’m conscious of not over-selling [the password crackdown] because you see Netflix’s success. But Netflix was in market for 17 years. That means people are sharing passwords for 17 years,” he said. “We’ve been in the market for four, if you count the HBO Max launch. And obviously, we’re not quite at the same scale, but relative to the scale of our business, it’s a meaningful opportunity.”
If nothing else, Max’s introduction of an Extra Member option as it rolls out its password crackdown highlights just how much of an industry leader Netflix is as other companies continue to copy its model, rather than trying something new.
Read Next: Max to Follow Netflix’s Example, Will Crack Down on Password Sharing
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