Not many businesses will escape from 2020 completely unscathed, but the combatants in the streaming wars are among the very few that could realistically come out of the Coronavirus pandemic in a stronger position than ever before. Viewership across all major platforms has gone up by 85% since March, while market leaders Netflix have added over ten million new subscribers in the last few months alone.
Of course, the company are hardly immune to the financial implications as has been shown by the ruthless way in which they’ve been canceling a much higher number of shows than usual, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing their plans for world domination. Netflix recently revealed that the 30-day free trial system is coming to an end, presumably to prevent people from signing up over and over again through dummy email accounts to avoid a subscription fee, and the replacement model has already been announced.
Starting with India and then moving onto more global territories, Netflix are going to make their entire content library free to an entire country’s worth of potential customers for a weekend, and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters revealed his excitement about the upcoming experiment in a recent statement, saying:
“This could be a great way to expose a lot of people to the service. It’s an idea that we’re excited about, and we’ll see how it goes.”
Netflix are the runaway leaders in the streaming business for a reason, and making the entire content library available free of charge for an entire weekend before snatching it away is an admittedly brilliant strategy. People get 48 hours to decide if they want to subscribe or not, and even if they don’t take the plunge, there’s still more than enough time to binge a series or two, while those wanting to continue on will be a lot more susceptible to subscribing once the freebie comes to an end.
