Brief - The Hustle

Why YouTube’s best weapon is its library

Written by Rob Litterst | Sep 15, 2022 6:38:04 AM

The streaming wars often feel like an arms race.

In 2021, Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon spent a combined $55B to enrich their content libraries, which estimates peg at:

  • 4.5k hours for Disney+
  • 40k hours for Netflix
  • 50k hours for Amazon

But YouTube…

… which is considered an alt-streaming competitor, blows them all out of the water.

  • Every three hours, YouTube adds as much content as Netflix and Amazon’s entire catalogs combined, or 20x Disney+’s.

With truly something for everybody, a recent poll found 95% of teens use the app.

Like YouTube, TikTok has also proven a formidable streaming competitor. Watch time on TikTok in 2021 was 22.6T minutes, compared to Netflix’s 9.6T.

The main difference: TikTok didn’t spend billions making that content — its users made it, for free.