As of March 29, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) had a better catalogue of Prime Video movies and TV shows compared to Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX). A new study has revealed that the former offered 18,405 movies and 1,981 TV shows while the latter was at 4,563 movies and 2,445 series.
According to the Wall Street research firm Barclays, Netflix’s overall catalog has experienced a slide of up to 28% over the past year. The slide has been associated with the September 2015 expiry of Netflix’s deal with Epix, which represented close to 2,000 movies. Apparently some of these movies are now available on Amazon Prime which has given Amazon an upper hand of its heightened numbers.
A granular comparison of the two by Mark Fahey at CNBC has also revealed that Amazon offered a better deal in terms of amount and quality of video streaming compare to Netflix. Additionally, it had more titles with high ratings from users. Amazon’s 9oo titles are under 10 minutes long Netflix has 30 short titles.
However, Quality is of more importance than quantity according to Barclays. Success will not only come by offering platforms that have large and deep enough library but also in offering constantly refreshed content that keeps consumers fascinated over a long period of time.
Well, Netflix has on several occasions disputed the correctness of third-party approximations about the size of its streaming lineup. Hence, it declined to comment on the Barclays study.
Its new theme is now a shift of from licensing non-exclusive content and instead choosing to embrace original series and movies that one can hardly get them anywhere else. The company has a budget of $5 billion on content in 2016 with a likelihood of raising it to more than $6 billion next year. That means 5% of its cash will be all about content budget.
But having a bigger bucket of content will not automatically translate to offering superior entertainment value. Netflix has to trend carefully. Furthermore, YouTube is raking in gazillion videos that are also offering amazing content.