The Netflix Superiority

Here is an entry that came to mind as soon as I was done with watching 2 documentaries on Netflix over the last few days: Fyre Festival and One of Us.

I was thinking about how Netflix started as a distribution app, that had your local movie rental business broke due to the ease with which you could just pay once a month to have a large amount of movies available all day every day. And realized how far ahead of everyone else they are nowadays. In a world where their competition is either in-on the streaming service business or have announced to be preparing to get into the business, they have the true upper hand in terms of what matters most in today's streaming world: content.

Netflix has found that the "hottest" intellectual properties (IP's) is not what gives you the upper hand; but rather producing and supporting new and innovative properties. The strategy of having access to new IP's had value at some point in the past when they produced Marvel Defenders' series with the Disney approval. However they quickly realized that those kinds of productions also left them without the upper hand as those are still Disney properties and not their own. So, they turned to the most valuable asset of them all: original content. Helping to produce independent films, international/foreign movies and series; started to feel the support and realize the change of times as their content went from not having an outlet to being in millions of homes, phones and tablets around the world.

They had patience and drive to continue to find creative ideas for movies, documentaries and series from around the world. And it paid off. Very popular worldwide series like 3%, Sense8, Stranger Things, House of Cards, The OA, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, The Crown, Bojack Horseman... I could keep going all day but I think you get my point.

All of those properties started to add up and pay off, and beyond that they provided flexibility for Netflix to start the new era of their movies to be taken more seriously; both critically and in terms of views. And so came the movie star power of Sandra Bullock, added to the great acting from child actors Julian Edwards and Vivien Lyra Blair. Not only more than 80 million individual accounts watched Bird Box the movie but also Roma the Mexican black and white movie directed by Alfonso Cuarón was released on the platform and in movie theaters and is now nominated for best picture at the Oscars... and who knows? Maybe by the time you are reading this will have won...

So what I wanted to say here is that as a matter of fact the next couple of years companies like Apple, Disney and others have announced streaming services with well-known past properties that we already know and love. However, when you look forward you realize that the experience of creating new and exciting properties is well accumulated under Netflix and their successful outpour of content that new generations become obsessed with you start to realize the gap is still quite large.

Am I excited for the Disney streaming service in terms of Star Wars and Marvel content that is and will continue to come out as the years go by? Yes. But I also find myself searching for new content like the great new documentaries, series and movies that Netflix has been able to produce more and more constantly than any other streaming platform out there.