Recent quarterly results from global streaming giants Netflix and Disney+ show subscriber growth in North America is slowing or turning negative, but in Europe’s biggest market, German TV giant RTL Group is betting because there’s still plenty of room for growth. .
On Wednesday, RTL launched an ambitious new streaming service that is the first of its kind to combine video streaming with movies, series and news content, a music streaming service that offers over 90 million songs and even 100 radio channels. .
The app, RTL+ Musik, aims to steer users away from major US platforms rather than expanding the overall streaming market in Germany. The German-language service is also betting that local audiences have an appetite for local content that the big ones aren’t getting. Currently, the company’s RTL+ video service has approximately 3.4 million paying subscribers. With the new service, RTL hopes to double it in the next four or five years. Together with RTL’s Dutch streamer Videoland, the company aims to grow to 10 million streaming subscribers by 2026.
RTL+Musik will cost $10.17 (€9.99) per month for the first six months, then it will increase to $13.23 (€12.99) per month. A smaller offer is also available, costing $5.08 (€4.99) per month, as well as an ad-supported free tier. In comparison, a Netflix subscription in Germany costs €7.99 to €17.99 ($8.14 to $18.32) per month, depending on the plan. Disney+ costs German subscribers €8.99 per month or €89.90 ($9.16/$91.60) per year.
At its core, RTL+ Musik is a cable-style bundling game: a gamble that consumers will be willing to pay a slightly higher price for significantly more diverse content. In addition to series, movies, news and music, RTL plans to continue adding streaming offerings, with podcasts, audiobooks and read-only magazine subscription services joining RTL+ next year. The content will come from various divisions of RTL’s parent company Bertelsmann, which counts publisher Penguin Random House, audiobook group AudioNow and magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr among its subsidiaries. However, the music is outsourced and provided under a license agreement with French music streamer Deezer.
This can be a risky move. While the German streaming market continues to grow, European markets tend to follow, lagging behind the US, where growth has slowed. Netflix has lost subscribers for two straight quarters and Disney’s domestic growth has been sluggish, adding just 100,000 new subscribers in North America in the last quarter, compared to 1.5 million in the previous three months.
But RTL and Bertelsmann accepted the transmission impulse. The broadcaster plans to triple its investment in original content, from around €200 million ($231 million) a year to €600 million ($692 million) by 2026, spending both on new series commissions and on platform technology and infrastructure.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
