Netflix finally releases streaming data

[ChrisHarper]

For the first time, Netflix has released their streaming data for the first half of this year. Have at it, friends!

https://nofilmschool.com/netflix-streaming-data

[Art Munson]

Bump

[LAwriter]

Thanks for that. Kinda interesting. Kinda depressing.

The data is appreciated, but it’s a far cry from being specific like other streamers are. Best as I can tell, the shows I’m heavily involved in writing for are in for 30-50 million hours of streaming. And still, the payout is pitiful. I wish they would release data for each episode playing.

From what I can tell, this data is more helpful for folks who are just wondering which shows are popular.

[ivanelsasser]

Thanks people! @LAwriter can I ask you how much are you doing for 50 million hours of streaming on Netflix? It’s a big mystery and maybe you can bring me some light about it. Thanks

[LAwriter]

The “shows” mentioned on the report that I have significant music on are doing approx 50M hours of streaming. My “actual” streams are still being obscured by Netflix as “1” per quarter. With of course an abysmal payout.

[uniqueplace]

The ‘hours viewed’ metric can be somewhat misleading, in my opinion.

Let’s consider the first show in the Netflix report, ‘The Night Agent Season 1,’ which accumulated 812 million hours viewed. Taking into account the following assumptions:

80% of viewers watch all 10 episodes.
5% of viewers watch only the first episode.
15% of viewers watch up to the fourth episode.
On average, there are 2 viewers per hour of viewing (considering that we often watch shows with someone else. It’s hard to estimate, but 2 viewers per hour seems reasonable, though it could be closer to 3. Definitely, it’s not just 1 viewer per hour, in my opinion.)
Based on these assumptions, I calculated that around 68 million individual viewers watched this show. While this number is significant, it’s important to remember that this is on a global scale, its supposedly the first viewed tv show on netflix.

Popular TV shows in the USA often reached about 8 million viewers (correct me if I’m wrong) for every episode, but considering international audiences, a tally of 50 million viewers isn’t far-fetched.

So, @LAwriter, if your show has 50 million hours of streaming and assuming it consists of 20 episodes (this is a random assumption), the total number of viewers might be approximately 3.19 million. This calculation follows the same logic as before, considering the percentage of viewers who watch all episodes, only the first one, or up to the fourth, and averaging 2 viewers per hour.

It’s a substantial number, but not overly so, especially considering the global audience. This might partly explain the low royalties some composers receive from these streaming platforms.
Because they pay on the number of views…

I’m not claiming this is the definitive interpretation, but it’s a way to illustrate how ‘millions of hours viewed’ statistics can be misleading

[LAwriter]

“but it’s a way to illustrate how ‘millions of hours viewed’ statistics can be misleading”

Ya think??? 🙂 :). Their entirely opaquely and secretive performance royalty reporting is misleading. Virtually every other streaming service is up front with their “views” / “counts”. Not so with Netscape. As of last royalty, they still report “1” view / count per line item while Hulu, Amazon, Discovery and almost every other streaming service reports 10’s to 100’s of thousands of views per line item. Obviously Netflix is not getting one view/count per line item on every single piece of music placed, so they are purposefully obfuscating the real numbers for their own reasons – whatever those may be. The above link that Chris posted is a puff piece of promotional doo doo…. Worth virtually nothing.

Little by little streaming services are becoming more transparent and paying out more, but Netflix is dragging their feet – kicking and screaming.

[LAwriter]

PS – even with Netflix, Disney, and others reporting only “1” performance per line item piece, I still have close to 200 Million performances reportedly streamed this last quarter. My guess is that if they all reported ACTUAL shows / films streamed, and each song per episode / film streamed, the numbers would be significantly over 300 Million across all reporting streaming services. I’ll not state the actual payout numbers, but for that many performances, it’s beyond dismal.

It’s quite a bit less than 1/10th of what a Spotify stream pays. Which of course is $0.004. Fun, huh?

PPS – these are US based only. Not international.

[Author]

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