Can Disney+ compete with Netflix?

By: Fleur Strik and Meredith Ford

Netflix, we’re all familiar with it. You pay 12.99 dollars a month and can watch as many movies and shows as you want. It was founded in August 29, 1997, but only became a huge name after they were the first company to offer streaming services in 2007. Because they were the first to offer these services they gained a huge amount of subscribers. But besides Netflix being the first, what makes it so popular?

Even after a lot of other streaming platforms came online like Hulu and Amazon Prime, some people think Netflix is relatively expensive. Josh Peters (21’) is one of them and said “I think it should be cheaper, it would be easier to access for people like college students that would use it a lot.” This could also potentially increase their subscribers. Something very convenient about Netflix is that one subscriber can have multiple accounts. This way people can share the costs or the whole family can be on one paid account. Other streaming platforms have this too, such as Disney+, which allows 4 accounts for one subscriber. So there are other platforms that do this, it doesn’t make Netflix an exception. What does make Netflix an exception is the original content they make which can only be seen on Netflix. These shows and movies are usually pretty popular and make Netflix different from other platforms. Sam Hazelwood (20’) also mentioned “Netflix doesn’t have any adds on their platform which makes it nicer to watch on there.”

Some people find Netflix overrated, feel like Netflix is just popular because of its’ name and isn’t actually better than other platforms. Peters doesn’t agree with this, he said “I don’t think it’s overrated, but I think others are underrated.” Because of the big name Netflix has the other streaming platforms that could be just as good fall into its’ shadow. Sydney Weddle (21’) has a similar view on this, saying “Netflix is overrated in some ways because people scoff at others when they don’t have Netflix so it almost seems to have a hold on them, and they are obsessed with it.” Peters doesn’t think Netflix better or worse, he just likes the site itself saying “It’s not better or worse than most other platforms, but it is easy to navigate.” Netflix has a very good overview of their shows and movies which makes it easy to watch. It’s not hard to figure out how the site works.

With Disney+ airing on November 12 as a new place to watch movies and shows, it gained more than 10 million subscribers. It’s had some launch issues but even with that a lot of people subscribed and are talking about it. Could this be the new streaming platform that will be more popular than Netflix? Weddle thinks it could be for a while, saying “Disney+ is everyone’s childhood so I think it will be really big for about a year and then it will dwindle off because people will get tired of the same things over and over again whereas Netflix will continually getting new shows.” Weddle likes Netflix better because “you can watch as many movies as you please, free at will, without any additional cost to my knowledge and if you use it enough, it pays for itself.” On Netflix you’re not stuck with just Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National geographic, you have more choices in movies and shows. More people share this opinion, agreeing that it will be popular in the beginning but get less popular after a while. Hazelwood said “It’s a cool thing, I don’t have it but I think it’ll be really popular for awhile and then die out because people don’t want to watch Disney all the time.” She prefers Netflix because it has a huge amount of movies and shows.

There are so many streaming platforms but Netflix has a huge amount of choices in movies and shows, including original content which makes them more demanding than other streaming platforms. Something people talk about a lot right now is Disney+, and even though it has gained a lot of subscribers in such a short period, people think its popularity will die down after a while because it will never have as much to offer as Netflix. People will always get Netflix just because of its name but it is a good site to stream movies and shows on and deserves its amount of subscribers.