Amazon Adds 1,000 Movies and TV Shows To Their Streaming Video Service

Earlier today, Amazon announced that they have added 1,000 more movies and TV shows to their Prime streaming video service. This brings Amazon's total number of movies and TV shows available for streaming to just over 6,000, per the Amazon website. So while it's not the volume Netflix has yet, Amazon has already added 1,000 more titles less than four months after launching their service.

As I have already blogged about before, I expect Amazon's Prime streaming service to disrupt Netflix over time. (You can read more about how here: Amazon Prime Streaming Will Disrupt Netflix, Here's How) Add in the fact that we all know that Amazon will come out with a tablet some time soon, and Amazon is really positioning themselves to own the entire value chain. While they won't own the content, they will control the distribution of video thanks to their AWS services group and control at least some of the devices the content is played back on. Amazon also said that they now have over 300 devices capable of streaming Amazon Instant Video.

After Amazon announced their new service, many said that Amazon would never spend the kind of money Netflix is, more than $1B this year alone, to license content. The difference is that Netflix needs to spend the money today to get more content to continue their growth. But Amazon gets the vast majority of their revenue from non-streaming related services and is not under as much pressure to close content deals fast. Advantage = Amazon.