The Invite Only Podcast: The Netflix of Everything Podcast

The Netflix of Everything

On this week’s pilot podcast, Nick and I talk about the current state of subscriptions.

Subscriptions have been hidden in our mind, they are far more than just the bills we pay, entertainment moved to subscriptions and channels of subscriptions over the last few years.

The subscriptions Nick and I have (and discuss):

• Entertainment: Audible, The Athletic, Masterclass, Medium,

• Personal Wiki: Notion (Evernote for other people)

• Entertainment: Bt Sports, Netflix, Disney+, Sky

• Shopping & Entertainment: Prime

• Productivity: G suite, Dropbox, Adobe

• Areas many forget about: Phone Apps & iCloud (android storage etc)

If you prefer to listen on your own podcast app

Or on Soundcloud listen here

Key Points From The Podcast

Timestamps:

• 1:57 - This week - Netflix of everything
  (Link to Soundcloud timestamp)

• 2:19 - Original programming down 12% @ Netflix

• 3:20 - The future of subscriptions

• 4:25 - Hardware subscriptions

• 5:35 - Netflix & Spotify early winners

• 6:03 - The list of our subscriptions

• 9:19 - Saturation Fatigue

• 11:02 - Free subscriptions, the forgotten unspoken subscriptions

• 12:14 - The subscription formula we can use to find value
  Cost 💰 x Time 🕰 x Entertainment 📺 x Recommendations 💡
  = Value of Subscription 💵

• 14:00 - VR: The next dimension

• 15:43 - Asking for recommendations vs being served cards to select shows

• 17:55 - The fight to be the canonical provider

• 18:40 - AR important play

• 23:23 - Premium content (PPV) the next wave

• 26:34 - Disney’s strategy and the genius one-pager

• 28:00 - Netflix’s secret, average content made them win round 1

• 29:26 - Peloton winning connected fitness

• 34:40 - Sports and the power of sports subs

• 36:53 - Nick’s key points (including the new hot subs…toy subscriptions)

• 47:37 - Nicks hot takes

• 52:05 - Danny’s hot takes

Disney’s Famous On Page Strategy Drawing - (mentioned at 26:33)

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Important Points Raised

• The fight for eyeballs has never been so tough 

• We live in an on-demand world - a mobile dominated world, an anywhere anytime on-demand world 

• The battle today - Apple TV, chrome cast, amazon prime stick, switch, game system, sky etc. Sky made a move to be the device of choice but hasn’t answered the problem of multiple subscriptions 

• The fight for our wallet is the most competitive than ever 

  • Subscription wallet 

  • Danny has 15 subscriptions that I counted last night.
    6 were video content subscriptions 

• The world we live in is controlled by subscriptions and knowing we get value for the subscription 

• The problem we all face is the product recycle-ment (aka copying everyone else) - this will kill real innovation and create duo/triopolys

• We have free content and free channels with social media that makes paid for services seem expensive 

  • Instagram stories and IGTV takes a lot of time 

  • Tiktok is taking hours away from people without them realising 

  • Facebook owns a lot of the “free” attention economy. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, 

• Maybe a formula to consider =
  Cost 💰 x Time 🕰 x Entertainment 📺 x Recommendations 💡
  = Value of Subscription 

• Peloton is the master of new age subscriptions and connected fitness. Their model is so smart. Tie ins with Beyoncé, Adidas and DJs is incredibly powerful. Exclusive first plays etc are going to be incredibly powerful. The Peloton hierarchy
  A. The Class 🚴 - Is it live or take part on demand
  B. The Instructor 👩‍🏫
  C. Community 👥
  D. Leaderboard 🚀

• Google’s billion doc users. Billion plus of YouTube users monthly. They have a huge market share with Android however they have struggled with subscriptions and being trusted with purchases and with credit card details from their most brought in users. Perplexing right

• Amazon & More Prime Expectations: Look at the influence of audible in books: (Amazon owns e-book and audiobooks)

  • The Coldest Case Audible Example: A Black Book Audio Drama - (Link). Cast: Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad etc etc), Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad & Jessica Jones), Nathalie Emmanuel (Hollyoaks, Fast & Furious & Game of Thrones), Beau Bridge (The Mountain Between US, One Night In Miami, The Descendants)

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🔥🔥The Hot Takes 🔥🔥 

Nick’s 🤖

1. Free idea to create a personalised AI driven recommendation engine for all services, remove the friction and stress of finding content, just serve it

2. Business opportunity to build one centralised tool for all streaming to help consumers

3. Is XR (extended reality) going to be the future - most likely long term

Danny’s 👥

1. We will see in the future - a subscription centre, apple and google have tried to do this on mobile, I think entertainment will do the same. 

2. With the watch parties and opportunity to watch in a group or chat through programs we will likely see platforms like Twitch or discord have a chance to really jump ahead and potentially have more influence with entertainment

3. I can see the browser becoming more important in this space 

   Why? Zoom out: Browsers can enhance experiences, can help track products, music, etc and then collate information and serve you information based on it 

   Zoom in: The browser is now seamlessly cross-functional. Apple has really nailed iCloud devices - so copy paste and send to our devices with airdrop. I think if Apple wanted to own entertainment without being a monopoly they could really dive into TV and subscriptions, reduce their cut and improve the experience

   Chrome is well placed but I cannot see apple addicts moving away from apple to android. 

   If you have ever watched sport (football or tennis) in a browser with BTSport or with Amazon prime video you will see how good and many options you have to improve the experience

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Some Unspoken Netflix Gems 💎

• Making mediocre content win 

• Famous Internal Metric:
  Efficiency (number of new subscribers) x keeping subscribers happy 

• TV series over movies (binge watching built deep family wide affinity)

  • Famous for saying sleep and fortnite are competitors 

• Always willing to test with formats (storytelling) 

• Can make non-English series popular with buzz (power of their newsfeed and algorithmic recommendations alongside WoM)

• Bubbling up addictive viewing to enough home feeds to make a show

• Making something a hit through feed + Marketing + WOM 

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Ponderings 🤔