Netflix Now Has More Than 200 Million Subscribers; Shuffle Button Coming Soon

Netflix has released its latest earnings report, providing a fresh look at how the streaming company is performing from a business perspective while also revealing new features.

For the fourth quarter of 2020, Netflix added 8.51 million new subscribers, boosting the company's total global subscriber base to 203.66 million. This compares to 8.76 million new subscribers added in the fourth quarter of 2019.

For the full year in 2020, Netflix added 37 million paid subscribers, which is up 31 percent from 2019's 28 million paid new subscribers. The overwhelming majority of new Netflix subscribers for the year (83%) came from regions outside of the United States and Canada. The EMEA region made up 41% of Netflix's paid new subscribers in 2020, while APAC was the second largest in terms of growth.

In terms of money, Netflix pulled in $6.6 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 (up from $5.5 billion during Q4 of 2019) and $542 million in profit (down from $587 million during Q4 of 2019).

Also in the earnings report, Netflix announced that it will soon roll out its shuffle play option to everyone globally after an initial testing phase in some regions. The response to the tests have been positive, Netflix management said, and this feature will now launch in the first half of 2021.

Netflix management said the shuffle play option is a "great mechanism" to keep members engaged. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings joked that the button would be called "I'm feeling lucky," but chief product officer Greg Peters said a final name will be revealed in due course.

Netflix has big plans for 2021, as the company plans to release a new movie every single week for the year. The company also confirmed that it currently has more than 500 titles currently in post-production.