Streaming is at an all-time high at the moment due largely to the current pandemic, but one service in particular is really on the rise.
In a recent earning call with investors ($88.9 billion in sales for the second quarter if you’re curious), Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky noted that the company’s worldwide streaming hours are double what they were at this point last year. Most of that, Olsavsky said, came from Prime Video usage (Amazon also has on-demand purchases and rentals that aren’t a part of Prime).
Olsavsky added that current conditions around the globe most certainly helped their rise, but he also pointed to the launch of several new Amazon Original series, the addition of watch parties for communal viewing and the launch of user profiles to manage individual content and viewing history.
What’s truly driving the surge is impossible to say though. A study just a few months ago found Amazon at the bottom for customer satisfaction with the variety of content, so it’s not like there’s a lot of “must see” content on the service. Their originals have done just fine, but originals from other services frequently rate higher than Amazon’s.
It’s likely a combination of a lot of smaller factors – quarantines pushing everyone indoors to stream more, people streaming through their catalogs on other services and venturing over to Amazon, and Amazon becoming more of a “catch all” stop for shopping, music, television and more.
Either way, people are streaming much more with the service than ever before. Now, the question is the same one that every streaming company is dealing with – how do you hold on to them?
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