2020 Bundles

Paul compares Netflix and Disney: Netflix built the infrastructure – streaming, recommendation engines,…. – and thereby created a very data- and engineering-driven internal culture. Disney, on the other hand, is all about imagination, creative ideas and intellectual property - and it just had to plug into the infrastructure that Netflix already bui... See more

As with the hand-wringing over millennial cord-cutting, the limitations of supporting 10+ independent creators at $10 a month is similar to the impracticality of a Hulu, HBO, Criterion, Topic, Netflix and Amazon Prime subscription (phew). The pendulum has swung back to bundling–whether in a form like Every, or some sweet Atlantic media money.

Focused, quality-obsessed publications will take advantage of bundle economics to collect “stars” and monetize them through some combination of subscriptions (less likely) or alternate media forms. Said media forms, like podcasts, are tough to grow on their own, but again, that is what makes them such a great match for writing, which is perfect for... See more

The bigger a bundle gets, the more likely it is that a subset of users are all paying for basically one piece of the bundle, which could be sold separately at a better price.

My content budget is finite. I only have so much time and money to indulge this very specific itch that Stratechery scratches. The other content in the bundle is extraneous. I could take it or leave it; and I can definitely substitute it with other entertainment.

Netflix, which is now spending $17 billion a year on programming, has added another 100 million customers since then, thanks to successes such as Bridgerton and Squid Game , as well as a crackdown on password sharing and the introduction of a cheaper, ad-supported plan. Netflix increased its profit through the first half of 2024 by 60% from a year ... See more