Top 10 Popular Genres The Streamers Love
Genre Analysis for Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, and Disney+
By: Bingqing (Claire) Li, Nan Ji, Caesar Zhang, Melodie He, CU Liu
In this article, we’ll show you
- Genre distribution of all streamers
- Genre distribution for each independent streamer
- Genre comparison across all 4 streaming services
Considering all 4 streaming service providers, we spotted the top 10 genres added to the services in Q1, 2021 — Drama, Comedy, Action, Adventure, Crime, Animation, Documentary, Romance, Thriller, and Family, each of which also accounts for at least 9% of the total unique shows. One thing worth mentioning is that Drama and Comedy are added twice as many as Action and Adventures, respectively. But what does the breakdown look like when it comes to an individual service provider?
Note: one show could be of multiple genres. The denominator used here is the unique number of shows.
From the chart below, it tells us 43% of Netflix shows added in Q1 are Drama and 30% of them are Comedy. HBO Max has its strong suit in both Drama and Comedy, which are both taking 40% of the total release in Q1. Surprisingly, Hulu added 34 (14%) Reality-TV shows in Q1, which is ranked #4 of all its genres. Disney+ obviously demonstrates a different genre distribution, where its top 4 genres are Comedy, Family, Animation, and Adventure. They all account for more than ⅓ of the shows.
To compare genre distributions across all platforms, we created the below 100% stacked bar chart to illustrate the difference.
Note: a few genres are > 100% only because same show title like The Day Sports Stood Still is provided by both streaming services HBO Max and Hulu. Refer to our blog Which streaming service added the most content in Q1, 2021?to check out shows that are streamed on multiple platforms.
- HBO Max is aggressively invested in multiple popular genres. Even though all three streaming services (except Disney+) have Comedy, Action, Adventure, and Crime as their top genres, HBO Max accounts for > 40% of the shares in all of them. Half of the Animations are from HBO Max too, even when Disney+ came to play. One of the reasons is that HBO Max became the exclusive streaming platform for DC content in January 2021, where DC Universe was rebranded as DC Universe Infinite with a sole focus on digital comic books. On Feb. 10, HBO Max ordered three new adult animated series, including Scooby-Doo spin-off Velma, a reboot of the vintage MTV show Clone High, and the original Fired on Mars. WarnerMedia also announced to launch a new preschool and kids programming block across Cartoon Network and HBO Max this fall, offering nearly 50 new shows within its first two years.
- Netflix added the most documentaries (39), where you can find popular ones like Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Seaspiracy, Eddie Murphy: Raw, Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, etc on Netflix.
- Hulu added the most reality shows (34). So now you have plenty of choices and are able to binge-watch Hell’s Kitchen, Pawn Stars, Top Chef, etc by subscribing to Hulu.
- When it comes to the genre of Family, all 4 streamers share a fair share (HBO Max: Netflix: Hulu: Disney+ is 27%: 27%: 25%: 21%)
Now, what’s your favorite genre of shows, and do you find the most suitable streaming platform for you to subscribe to?
