Another View on Netflix' Success

For quite some time Netflix has made up an enormous percentage of online activity in the US. During prime time hours, Netflix makes up as much as 20% of all Internet bandwidth in the US. According to Silicon Alley Insider, Canaccord Genuity analyst, Heath Terry, has done an analysis of Netflix traffic compared to Hulu. His basic findings were:

• In Q1 2011 Netflix averaged 78 million unique users and its base of uniques has spiked sharply upwards since late 2010.
• Hulu, a free service and a big success story in its own right, had about 58 million in the same period. Hulu’s uniques have stayed in the 55 - 65 million range now since late in 2009.

This kind of showing by a subscription video service by a smart and aggressive company may bode well for the spate of new cloud-based music subscriptions services that have just launched or that are about to. Who will get it right in music?