Netflix Reveals Plans for New Top 10 Charts

Netflix subscribers now have a brand new, and much more insightful view into what other people are watching. The days of Netflix keeping its streaming numbers a secret are over. The service announced recently that it would start reporting numbers in actual measurements of time, rather than the previous two-minute “view” count. On Tuesday, the streaming service took a massive step forward in showing how exactly it will report those numbers.

Tuesday marked the launch of a new Top 10 chart system for Netflix. Yes, the streamer already has a Top 10 system that rotates daily and doesn’t offer any actual viewership information. This isn’t that. This Top 10 chart is weekly, shows the most popular titles around the globe or in specific countries, and breaks up content by English and non-English languages. Most importantly, this new Top 10 system reveals specific viewership metrics, a first for Netflix.

For example, the global movies Top 10 chart from last week shows Red Notice as the most-watched Netflix title in the world. That should come as no surprise, seeing as how Netflix already announced that it had the company’s biggest ever original film debut. The chart also reveals, however, that Red Notice was streamed for over 148 million hours. The second movie on the list, Love Hard, was streamed for 58.5 million hours. 

An important part of understanding the decisions made by Netflix to cancel or renew shows, or make sequels to its original movies, is seeing the actual viewership. To this point, subscribers weren’t able to do that, relying solely on the daily Top 10 list or outside sources to try and figure out how popular a title actually was. 

“This is an important step forward for Netflix, the creators we work with and our members,” Pablo Perez De Rosso, VP of content strategy, planning & analysis, wrote in a blog post. “People want to understand what success means in a streaming world, and these lists offer the clearest answer to that question in our industry.”

The newly released Top 10 charts, which you can check out here, go all the way back to June of this year. It’s unclear if numbers from before that time will ever be published. What we can count on, though, is that Netflix will continue putting out these numbers going forward.

This is a major step forward for streaming transparency. Hopefully other streamers will do the same in the future.