With Netflix losing subscribers, is music's own streaming party over? (Talking Trends)

<p>Welcome to the latest episode of Talking Trends, the weekly podcast from <a href='https://musicbusinessworldwide.com/'>Music Business Worldwide</a> (MBW) – where we go deep behind the headlines of news stories affecting the entertainment industry. Talking Trends is supported by <a href='http://www.volymusic.com/'>Voly Music.</a><br/><br/>On this episode, MBW founder Tim Ingham analyzes the news the Netflix&apos;s global subscriber base fell quarter-on-quarter in Q1 2022 – and ponders whether leading music streaming services like Spotify will soon face similar headwinds. <br/><br/>Netflix<a href='https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/19/netflix-shares-down-more-than-20-after-losing-200000-subscribers-in-first-quarter/'> lost 200,000 subscribers in Q1</a>, meaning that more people unsubscribed from the platform in the quarter than actually subscribed to it.<br/><br/>Ingham sifts through Netflix&apos;s new <a href='https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/FINAL-Q1-22-Shareholder-Letter.pdf'>letter to shareholders</a>, in which the video streamer explains why it thinks these subscribers left its platform.<br/><br/>Says Ingham: &quot;One very convincing take on Netflix&apos;s poor Q1 results is that the [macro economic] sluggish economic growth and increasing inflation [in the world today] are actually the only factors that really matter here. <br/><br/>&quot;Inflation in the US, for one thing, hit a very scary 8.5% in March, according to the Consumer Price Index. <br/><br/>&quot;That 8.5% was the highest US inflation rate we&apos;ve seen since 1981: that&apos;s over 40 years ago. This is once in a generation stuff. <br/><br/>&quot;So it&apos;s no great shock that people are starting to worry very seriously about their cost of living, versus the salary they have dropping into their bank account every fortnight or month. <br/><br/>&quot;And they&apos;re making sensible cutbacks of goods and services they can ultimately live without.&quot;</p>