Amazon said it spent $11 billion last year on video and music content for its Amazon Prime services, an increase of 41% over 2019.
The disclosure was made Thursday in an annual report, which also highlighted the company’s surpassing of 200 million prime members worldwide. Amazon said it grew its Prime base by 50 million members in the pandemic year of 2020.
Amazon didn’t say how many of those members regularly tap into Prime Video, either domestically or on a global basis, or how many Prime members live in the U.S.
The $11 billion figure accounts for what Amazon Studios spends making original TV shows and movies, as well as licensing content for Prime. In addition, the figure includes money spent on maintaining transactional services that rent and sell video and music content.
According to data supplied by BMO Capital Markets, Netflix spent $17.3 billion on content in 2020—a figure that’s a bit apples-and-oranges when compared to Amazon, which runs a very different business, but one that does have some merit, nonetheless.
Amazon’s total revenue increased by 38% to an all-time high of $386.1 billion in 2020. Net income for the year was $21.3 billion, nearly doubling the $11.6 million made in 2019.
