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I've always wondered how Netflix does attribution for their netflix originals.

For example, do they take the percentage of a person's viewing habits that the show takes up, multiply it by their monthly subscription revenue, and attribute it to the show for all viewers?

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They have enough data to do statistics that are probably pretty accurate. I wouldn't be able to just whip off a description of exactly how you'd do that in an HN comment, I'd have to think about it for a while since I don't do this every day, but I'm fairly confident the people who do can get a very precise answer to that question with the data they have. Certainly an answer precise enough to give to the executives deciding which series to keep and what to invest in.

And yet, their recommended movie list is still not that strong :(

It used to be a lot better, but the increasing cost of licensing Hollywood films has been cutting into the size and quality of their catalog.

I recall reading that's how Spotify's model works.

Spotify's model is slightly different - for premium subscriptions, they pool the total subscription revenue, take their cut, and then pay out to the artists, based on their total share of listens. Not awful, not ideal.

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