Streaming services are pretty much everywhere right now and cable TV as we know it is surely on a massive decline as well. While most streaming services were limited to movies in the past, many of them have gotten increasingly popular as a substitute for cable in recent years because of their various original series.
While, there are a plethora of streaming services out there right now like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+. HBO Now, Disney+ and more, let’s just look at Netflix for now.
Netflix was the very first “streaming service” if you could call it that when it first started. In the very beginning, all it consisted of was simply getting DVDs of major movies mailed to your home, and its biggest competitor was Blockbuster. As we all know, Blockbuster slowly began to die out and couldn’t compete with Netflix’s slow merge with the internet
When Netflix started to make its movies available online, this truly defined it as a “streaming service”. Netflix became a staple of the movie industry over time and essentially held the biggest monopoly for watching films at home.
It had almost no competition, but the market has definitely changed in recent years. With more and more large companies realizing the profits that could be generated, more and more streaming services have essentially popped out of nowhere
However, Netflix still manages to stay at the top. How on Earth does it manage to do that?
Well, it’s because Netflix has managed to innovate and change things up on incredibly often and massive scale. There’s definitely both pros and cons to these changes over time, and some of them we haven’t really noticed too much.
Of course, Old Netflix is vastly different than New Netflix. Now there are TV Shows, Netflix exclusives, more current movies, less wait times for new releases, and so many more changes to increase user-satisfaction and user-friendliness. It’s expanded onto so many more platforms whether its complex video game consoles or even just phones. It’s readily available all across the world in more countries than any other streaming service, and it’s even won an Oscar for one of its original works.
On the other side of these changes, the monthly prices have risen to the point where they have doubled when comparing the original price of Netflix of $7.99 to the price of Netflix Premium at $15.99. Additionally, its incredibly famous algorithm for recommending movies has also received massive criticism for its changes.
Previously, each user’s interface would offer all movies available on the platform along with detailed reviews and ratings for the user to look at. Now, it’s removed the option of having all movies present in the user’s personal interface and rather focused on delivering a computer-generated small bubble of what it believes the user would like.
The rating system has also been removed and has been replaced by a similarity percentage in reference to other movies the user has watched. A good amount of users have complained as a result that the movies and shows available to them have essentially become a little bubble that lacks variation and originality. More users are getting bored of the same genre and type of entertainment more quickly.
Netflix is the biggest streaming service right now, but its also slowly losing its strength in the market. With the combination of some poor decisions and increasing competitors that pull away from their shows and movies, Netflix has slowly fallen from its definitive throne at the top of the “watching movies at home” business. It no longer holds the massive monopoly it once used to.
Maybe it might have a massive comeback with the new merger with Nickelodeon that they’ve been bringing up or maybe that won’t be enough. We’ll just have to wait and see what they come up with next in terms of innovation and change.
With “The Office” being cut from Netflix and the phenomenon of Disney+’s “The Mandalorian,” streaming services are getting a lot of attention recently. That makes it the perfect time to discuss the streaming service which started it all, Netflix. I found myself getting almost nostalgic when you mentioned Netflix mailing movies to people, and we all use Netflix – probably too much. This makes the blog attention-catching and engaging. Your analysis is insightful, per usual, and it was fun to see your perspective. I’d be curious to hear your speculation on the future of cable television.