Netflix surges ahead. 3 million new subscribers last quarter. 36m to date. This is killing traditional TV viewership.

 

 
The surge of Netflix goes on and on.

They've just announced 3 million new subscribers in the first quarter (beating brands like HBO). That means they've over 36 million subscribers (of which 'm one).

Revenue for the quarter broke 1 billion usd and the share price went over 200 usd for the first time. Extraordinary stuff for what is, pretty ordinary content but the key is ease of access at a low cost. Their free trial, only resulted in 8000 people cancelling, a really low churn rate so generally people are happy.

Netflix are great at what they do and now lead the way in TV broadcasting and have developed their own shows. Nevermind killing high street video rental who were too slow at getting into the space.

They also know how to grow - market by market - with stealth. Pick off country by country.

The other beneficiaries of Netflix are brands like Sony who in allowing connectivity through their Xbox for example, generate revenue and indeed all connected TV's will do well out of this - provided, Netflix agree to allowing them take their content.

This is a case where such a strong content partner can now dictate who carries their signal and on what terms.

Whilst TV broadcasters continue to commission "reputable" research showing TV viewing still remains high, it is to say the least, dubious. They continue to try to hide the ongoing collapse of TV viewing habits but publishing data about the TV itself. In other words, claiming that those using are using a TV set to view content are "TV viewers" ....when in fact, they are watching other content such as Netflix. Or YouTube via their Television set.

These massive increases in online content viewing are helping to dispel the myth that TV viewing of traditional broadcasters content, is holding steady - when clearly it's not.

Simply, the Netflix numbers and the facts about usage of Social Media in the home from Facebook and others, are exposing the death of traditional broadcasting. 

They both cannot be right.
 

Microsoft launch XBox Music. Too little, too late. Again.

 
Microsoft, who are famed for doing nothing really, have just unveiled their X Box music service, called.....XBox Music!

It's a competitor to Itunes with music streaming (30 milion tracks), downloading and indeed, Radio. 

It's free if you'll tolerate the Ads or it's a subscription service under 10 usd a month which allows you unlimited steaming which at the moment, is designed for Windows 8 only (so too bad if you're on Android or Mac) but that's all to come shortly. Equally too, a cloud based locker is in the pipeline for storage (and stats during the week on cloud services show it's really being adopted).

The purchase of songs operates exactly like Amazon or Itunes and it's ideally targeted at mobile devices - notably The Surface tablet which has caused such controversy.

Although they did previously have a music service called Zune, it was discontinued as it wasn't competing. 

I'm not a fan at all of Steve Ballmer CEO or of Microsoft.
They seem to do everything poorly and get to everything late without any innovation but rather, a "me too" service.

By putting commercial people in charge (Ballmer was a salesman whereas Gates was a techy) rather than techies, they lost their way. Not a mistake that Apple made with Jobs at the helm.

So here too is another example of a music service that's late and rolled out in a limited way - not fully thought through.

It seems to me that Microsoft needs a shake up if it's ever going to reachieve its glory days as world-dominant. Today, Apples's Iphone business alone, is bigger than Microsoft.

This launch won't make the slightest change in that.