How Netflix Copied the Music Industry to Change How We Watch Content

Photo by Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash

It’s hard to picture life without Netflix. It’s hard to even picture what life was like before any streaming services.

Netflix forever changed the way we consume content. We went from waiting each week for a show to binging it all at once.

So how did the streaming giant create this new mode of consumption? Part of it has to do with the music industry.

The Early Days of Netflix

Ted Sarandos — co-CEO and Chief Content Officer for Netflix — recently appeared on the “Smartless” podcast and discussed the early days of the platform.

Depending on your age, you may not know that Netflix started out as a DVD subscription service done by mail.

You may not know that this service still exists and there are a few million people that continue to get their movies in the post.

Netflix started in 1999 with the subscription service, but it was Napster that drew their attention to new possibilities.

The online file sharing service was paving the way for how media could be consumed.

Could videos be rented and “streamed” online, too?

It was timing that would lead to Netflix becoming a streaming content provider.

In the early 2000s, broadband speeds were just not fast enough — but they were starting to improve. At the same time, postage costs were going up.

If they waited until the right moment, those two lines would cross and it would be a cost-effective time to launch the service.

This happened in 2007 when Netlfix moved online.

The streaming giant now has over 200 million subscribers and is worth over $194 billion.

Their value increased through the pandemic and in 2020, they made more than Disney.

How Did Netflix Create the Binge-Style of Media Consumption?

In his interview on “Smartless,” Sarandos mentions how at first, Netflix was just made up of all the movies they ported over.

They also had some older TV shows. Since the entire series of a show already existed, it only made sense to have every episode available at the same time.

This was interesting. Unless you owned the DVD box set of a show, you were only able to view episodes when they first aired.

Or, you could wait to catch them in reruns — but you never knew what episodes would be broadcast.

With Netflix, you could now watch as many episodes as you wanted in a day.

The term “binging” wasn’t a thing yet — despite the full availability of different TV shows.

This would all change when Netflix started to create its own original programming — and it started with “House of Cards.”

Sarandos calls this a “happy accident.” They decided if they were going to create their own programming, they had to go full-on with it.

“House of Cards” received a $100 million budget, which was astounding for a non-network TV show.

The entire season was filmed — but how were they going to release the episodes?

Since past seasons of other TV shows were already available they believed they couldn’t release just one episode a week.

“House of Cards” was the first big deal for Netflix, but a show called “Lillyhammer” was the first original programming they released.

Sarandos was talking to the producer of “Lillyhammer” who was in Norway to produce an album for a band.

The show was ready and Sarandos told them they were going to release the show all at once.

The producer was taken aback since they had just spent nine months of their lives on something that was going to be dumped out all at once.

Sarandos realized releasing a series like an album was the way to go. An album doesn’t release one song a week until the album is complete — you get it all at once.

Since the producer was involved with music, this concept resonated with him. Netflix original programming would be like releasing a music album but with video.

For the first time ever, we could now watch the entire series of a new show all at once. It turns out people liked this.

Sarandos says how their early data revealed that people watched several episodes all at once. They also never watched just one episode.

But has this changed over the years?

Is Binging the Best Way to Consume Content?

Many have come to dislike the idea of binging a new show all at once.

We loved the binging concept at first because it satisfied our insatiable appetite to consume.

We didn’t have to wait for the next episode and could watch on our own time.

Now, that’s starting to change.

Waiting more than a year for a new season of a show only to watch it in eight hours seems pretty absurd.

Many now prefer to space the new episodes out over the course of weeks or a month.

The problem is, you have to avoid every form of human contact and communication.

You can have the end of a new show ruined if you forgot to stay off Twitter the day it released.

The other problem with binging is that it doesn’t create a collective viewing experience. One of the big draws of TV is the community aspect to it.

We’re all watching this thing at the same time and experiencing it together.

After, you can freely discuss it with friends and anticipate the next episode.

Disney+ has done this with shows like the “Mandalorian” and “WandaVision.” There’s no jumping ahead and you have to wait.

More excitement is built for a new episode and no one can spoil it by jumping ahead too quickly.

There's something nice about a return to a traditional viewing experience.

Consuming “Stranger Things” in one sitting was cool, but the build-up and excitement to the weekly episodes of “Breaking Bad” always seemed more exciting.

Final Thoughts

It will be interesting to see if Netflix ever moves to a weekly release schedule with new shows and seasons.

Like Disney+, Amazon Prime Video has also done this with a few shows.

From a business aspect, it seems to make sense to release a show episode by episode as that could lead to longer subscription times.

Many people will go for long periods without Netflix only to buy it for a month just to watch a new series and cancel after.

With Disney+, If you don't want to miss “WandaVision” or “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” they’ll get at least three months of payment compared to just one if they had released “WandaVision” all at once.

The binging concept will always exist as people want to have control over how they consume their media.

But the return into a collective viewing experience seems to be bringing even more eyes and attention to a show.

When episodes of “WandaVision” were released each Friday, they were the number one trending topic of Twitter each week.

I think people just want to feel excited about something.

Netflix is the industry standard so it will be interesting to see if their approach to content consumption changes or stays the same.

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