- Staff Notice
Some news items from America's Variety mag which clearly show which way the wind is blowing, so to speak:
Amazon Spent $11 Billion on Prime Video and Music Content in 2020, Up 41%
Amazon spent a cool $11 billion on TV series, movies and music for its Prime services last year, an increase of 41% from $7.8 billion in 2019, the ecommerce giant disclosed in its annual report Thursday.
Amazon Prime Tops 200 Million Members, Jeff Bezos Says
Amazon Prime, the ecommerce giant’s membership program that includes access to Prime Video, now counts more than 200 million subscribers globally, founder Jeff Bezos wrote in his final annual letter to shareholders as CEO.
Bezos most recently had announced that Amazon Prime had topped 150 million members in January 2020. The company rarely releases such metrics and doesn’t break out the number of Prime members by country or region, nor has it revealed specific numbers about Prime Video viewership. In the U.S., Amazon Prime costs $119 per year or $12.99 per month (plus taxes).
If anyone had any lingering doubts about whether Amazon was just sticking its toes into the media world, or whether it wanted to take it over, these articles show that Amazon is very serious about its media business and is here to stay. Whether they'll knock Netflix off their perch remains to be seen but at 200 million paying customers, they are a serious force now in the world of "broadcasting".