
In this article:
- Get a bird’s eye view of Netflix’s decline in recent months and learn what’s driving this once-in-a-decade change.
- Find out what made Netflix bigger than its competitors and why these are the same reasons for its decline.
- Discover how the increasing division of video content between multiple streaming platforms is driving the return of piracy.
Netflix’s decline is on the horizon, but it’s going to take more than just one issue to kill the platform.
The streaming giant has proven to be one of the biggest game changers of the decade. You probably don’t even need to see the stats, just think back to the past ten years and think: How many streaming platforms were around before Netflix became popular?
That said, what comes up must, eventually, come down and in the case of Netflix, it’s starting to look like the platform is going the way of Blockbuster. Disgruntled subscribers have named reasons such as canceled shows, increasing prices, and better competition as their reasons for leaving, but the prevalence of exclusive shows that can only be found on one platform is quietly driving a piracy renaissance.
An Overview of Netflix’s Decline: Losing Subscribers, Increasing Prices

The internet hasn’t always been waiting on Netflix’s decline. The platform was once a media darling because of its convenience, wide selection of shows, relative cheapness, and original shows.
Netflix started out as a DVD rental company that competed against big-name rentals like Blockbuster but even then, Netflix understood that convenience was the name of the game when it comes to gaining customers. During the late 1990s, the company shipped DVDs directly to people’s houses, saving them the trouble of going to their local Blockbuster.
While this didn’t offer as much flexibility and immediate reward as driving down to a video rental and picking out a movie in person, it was terribly convenient. Imagine you’re a busy office employee who only really has time to watch movies on the weekends. You could rent a DVD, wait for it to arrive on the weekdays, and watch it on a Saturday.
By 2003, Netflix had around 1 million subscribers, giving them the perfect jumping point for launching a dedicated online streaming service. The switch to video on demand helped Netflix capture a market that had never before experienced hyper-convenient media consumption on the scale that the platform offered.
That’s the thing, though — Netflix’s business model works only for as long as people are willing to pay for the entire subscription which means that if people don’t see shows they like on the platform or realize that the shows they want to see belong to another streaming platform, they’re going to jump ship.
Signs of Netflix’s decline began to appear earlier this year. By July 2022, the company had lost nearly 1 million subscribers, a shock after it began to lose subscribers for the first time in 10 years back in April 2022.

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This came in the wake of the company’s announcement in March 2022 that it would be increasing prices for its basic, standard, and 4k plans. The increases were also coupled with news that Netflix would be charging extra for the use of their plans on additional screens and, later in June 2022, that they would be charging for additional households using the same account. This meant that Netflix subscribers logging in from outside their home zip code would have to pay extra to watch their favorite shows.

Netflix’s decline in subscribers has led to the platform canceling shows to try and cut costs. Among the recent casualties of Netflix’s penny-pinching efforts is First Kill, a teen vampire series, that was said to not have achieved Netflix’s viewership count criteria for continuing shows.
Netflix has also cited this reason for the cancellation of many of its other original shows. The company does it so often that many viewers feel discouraged about starting a Netflix original since the time they invest in watching a show never pays off when Netflix ultimately decides to end a series.
Why Netflix’s Competition Failed and How It Will Fail Too

Netflix’s decline is troubling. But is it actually going to fail? The simple answer is: Not any time soon. Like cable, it’s likely to have a steady decline over the coming years, giving it plenty of time to get back into its stride again.
But if Netflix’s decline continues, we’re likely to see it struggle with many of the same issues that allowed it to get a leg up on competitors like Blockbuster.
Let’s start with the most obvious one: The variety of shows available on the platform. While Netflix has continued to put out new original shows, old shows continue to pull in revenue. A lot of people watch shows just to have background noise while they go about their day. Many people also rewatch their favorites because they’re familiar, which is called comfort viewing, and because they already know what to expect. No disappointment of a show having a flop ending, no anxiety from plot twists.
This is why Netflix has fought to keep Friends on its platform and why Friends actors are still making $22 million from the show’s Netflix deal.
Everything else, though? It’s on a different platform.
Netflix’s struggle to put out original content is mostly because it doesn’t have the money to do it on the level that giants like HBO and Disney can. This is especially problematic for Netflix since these companies now have their own video-on-demand platforms, HBO GO and Disney+ where they now exclusively host their content.
Game of Thrones? It’s on HBO GO. Star Wars? Disney+. We could keep going, but you get the point. This also makes Netflix less convenient than it originally was because you now have to pay for it and multiple other subscriptions unless you decide to stick to just one.
And if Netflix barely has any shows, are you really going to keep it? Oh, and let’s not forget the extra trouble of paying for an upgraded plan if you’re watching from out of town.
So now Netflix is trapped in a Catch-22-like situation where they need to make shows to keep viewers but the shows are too expensive to make and continue so they lose viewers. They’ve tried to pad their library with foreign shows such as Korean dramas, which are actually very popular, and other Asian and Latino dramas.
Now, to be clear, this is not to say that there are no good non-English shows, but if you’ve been on the internet, it doesn’t take a genius to learn that a lot of Netflix’s viewers in countries like the Philippines and India (and maybe even Latinos) subscribe to Netflix because they don’t like local shows. Netflix has managed to alienate both its Anglosphere viewers and non-Anglosphere viewers.
Reason #3 for Netflix’s early success and its coming decline is affordability. People made the jump from cable to something completely new because Netflix was cheaper than cable. All those shows, on-demand, for just a small fee per month? Sign us up! But now that you need multiple subscriptions and Netflix is increasing prices for every little thing to keep content production going, it’s not looking so affordable anymore.
Still with me?
Now, let’s presume that maybe, just maybe, Netflix’s decline continues and results in the platform’s downfall. Many platforms are going to try and scramble to fill the void left by Netflix, but before we think of who gets to be the next Netflix, we ought to consider if there will even be a next Netflix.
Streaming platforms run their own little feudal state these days. They don’t share IPs on the same platform, forcing you to pay for multiple subscriptions. Those tiny $10 – $20 monthly subscription fees add up fast and to add insult to injury, if the platform ever decides to take down a show permanently or sell it to a different company for use on their video streaming platform, you won’t get to keep your own copy.
Enter Netflix, and every streaming platform’s real competition in the coming years, piracy.
Netflix’s #1 Competition: Piracy

Yarr, mateys.
If you were around in the early 2000s, you might remember Limewire, the internet’s premier program for giving your computer digital AIDS. But hey, we took that risk because it meant we could watch Heroes whenever we wanted and keep on rewatching it even after NBC took it off the air.
Not to mention, piracy was (and still is) free.
People who have always pirated shows are going to keep pirating them, sure. But for those who have stopped and those who have never pirated before, the only thing that’s keeping them from doing it is convenience.
Whether or not you agree with it, piracy continues to be prevalent because people perceive the prices of digital goods as unfair. Is it logical or completely based on reality? Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn’t matter because perception is reality and people are irrational creatures who do what they want. If they think the price isn’t fair, they will pirate content.
It just so happens that pirating content is hard and risky so people agree to pay for subscriptions just so they don’t have to go through the work of downloading torrents.
Take away perceptions of price fairness and make services more inconvenient than committing a crime and people start to turn back to piracy.
This isn’t just speculation. The stats are in for 2022 and they say piracy is sexy again.
Pirated videos have raked in over 230 billion views this year, costing the US economy and video streaming companies between $29.2 to $71 billion. And the #1 country piracy site visits are coming from? It’s the U.S.