Disney+ Now Wants You to Pay to Share Your Account

Well, it's official: Disney is now asking you to pay to share your Disney+ account with other people. What started as a casual announcement during an interview back in April has now morphed into company policy, and that company expects you to pay up.

The news came on Wednesday: In a bulletin to subscribers, Disney laid out its new rules for what it calls "paid sharing." Like Netflix before it, Disney now considers a Disney+ subscription exclusive to the household of the subscription holder. Anyone who lives in that household can access the account on their devices without additional charge. However, in order for someone outside that household to access the account, they'll need to pay.

Disney's approach is to offer users an add-on called "Extra Member." For $6.99 per month for Disney+ Basic or $9.99 for Disney+ Premium, you can add one other user to your account. That's pretty expensive, considering Disney+'s prices are also going up: After Oct. 17, Basic will cost $9.99, and Premium will cost $15.99 per month, or $139.99 per year.

This Extra Member will only be able to stream on one device at a time, and is the only approved user to access your account outside your household: You cannot add more Extra Member accounts.

If you're wondering about alternatives to the Extra Member add-on option, Disney has an answer: Sign up for your own account. That's actually their policy: "As an alternative to Extra Member, people outside of your Household can sign up for their own subscription to watch Disney+." Disney says it's rolling out a feature to transfer user profiles to new accounts, so you can sign up for your own Disney+ account and keep your watch history and settings consistent. Netflix offers the same service.

You probably don't need to pay for this add-on to watch Disney+ on someone else's dime, however. Disney doesn't fully explain how watching outside your household works, but it does confirm something I thought would be true: If you sign into your account on a TV, and you get an error message like “This TV doesn’t seem to be part of the Household for this account,” there's a new option to set yourself as "I'M AWAY FROM HOME." When you choose this, the account holder receivers a one-time passcode to their email, so if you're close enough with the owner, you can hit them up for the code.

Disney doesn't explain how watching on other devices outside your household works, but my guess is, as long as those devices connect to the main household every now and then (perhaps once a month), you'll be able to stream without an issue. That's how it works for Netflix, anyway.

You can learn more about these potential workarounds from our piece here.