news culture Netflix: Why do I subscribe for a month before deleting my account?

Netflix: subscribers down

In April, Netflix published its results for the first quarter of 2022. Like some of you, I didn’t pay too much attention to it, telling myself that the streaming and video-on-demand platform was still going garner many subscribers thanks to its increasingly extensive catalog. However, you have to admit that I was surprised: she recorded a net loss of 200,000 subscribers. So yes, it’s a drop in the ocean of its 220 million subscribers (0.1%), but it’s not a trivial number. Although this number is partly the result of international sanctions from Russia, it made me reflect on my own consumption of Netflix: myself stopping my subscription on a regular basis, I tried to dissect it all. A behavior that can be explained in two ways, which revolve around the content of the catalog.

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Netflix: an indigestible catalog

First, I’m going to talk about the overflow of series and movies available on Netflix. Maybe I don’t want to risk watching something that will end up displeasing to me. but I just can’t choose in the gargantuan offer on offer. An overflow that is made up of iconic series to watch again (Friends when you hold us) or new productions, each more original than the other: I can, for example, cite series close to video games, such as Arcane Where The Witcherbut also of Stranger Things, Money Heist, Peaky Blinders or the excellent sports documentaries like The Last Dance Where Formula 1: Drive to Survive… which provokes undisguised enthusiasm when we know that a similar series is being filmed on tennis. Despite everything, I have the feeling of not being able to stay on the platform. Maybe the recommendation algorithm is having a hard time pinning me down, but I’m not swinging from series to series like I’d like to be. From then on, I subscribe for a month trying to consume all the content that I have been told elsewhere than on the platforma method that goes well with the second point that I will emphasize.

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A critical delay in Japanese anime

A point that will speak only to lovers ofanimated Japanese. ‘A fan of this medium since I was little, I can’t find what I’m looking for on Netflix. The reason ? The almost systematic delay of the platform on the last seasons of the big anime blockbusters, such as Demon SlayerWhere the attack of the Titans. On this subject, it is a very long list of hits that are missing: Jujutsu Kaisen (yet the best-selling manga in Japan in 2021), tokyo revenge and the most recent Horimiya Where Ranking of Kings. So yes, I’m often caught up in anime from other well-known manga like Naruto, Cowboy Bebop, Psycho-Pass or Samurai Champloo. But these works are not new enough to make me dive several months in a row on the platform. A finding that can also be observed on the side of original productions, not numerous enough to make me stay. So be careful, you have to recognize that quantity does not equal quality, especially since some of the anime are to be recommended (Violet Evergarden, Castlevania or the recent bubble). But that’s not enough. And as mentioned above, the algorithm struggles to offer me online content with them.

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A formula and a price that contradict my consumption

In any case, two or three months of subscriptions per year is enough to quench my thirst for cinematic content thanks to Netflix. A choice more than reinforced by the recent price increase of the platform, especially since the offers offered seem inconsistent to me: living alone, I still want to enjoy Netflix in good quality, with HD videos. Formula that I can have by only subscribing to €13.49, i.e. the one that allows you to have two screens at the same time. In my opinion, it would be fairer to offer Full HD to everyone and increase the price according to the number of simultaneous screens desired. If Netflix reverses this decision, maybe my consumption will change then. But that doesn’t seem to be what the platform has committed to. Of course, this is only a personal observation and everyone will be able, or not, to find themselves in the statements substantiated above. You just have to be honest with yourself and realize the difference between an à la carte menu or a buffet: either you choose what you want to eat or you risk overdosing.

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