A lot has changed for Netflix over the past few years. The company has seen increasing competition from rivals like Hulu and Amazon Prime, and as a result we've seen Netflix shrink its U.S. catalog and focus increasingly on original series. That's resulted in changes in viewer preference, too: our user rating analysis proved that Netflix subscribers are enjoying the new original series more than the non-original content.

But these findings raise as many questions as they answer. Where is the ideal intersection between quality and quantity? Do viewers prefer Netflix original series because they're better than syndicated content, or are they the default choice against a broader catalog that's actually dropping in quality? We know that Netflix's U.S. catalog has shrunk, but what can we say about its quality?

Our sister site, AllFlicks, set out to answer that question. They polled more than 1,300 American Netflix subscribers, pulling their sample from AllFlicks visitors and members of Reddit's /r/netflix community. They found that Netflix's catalog isn't just smaller these days – it's actually worse.

Netflix Subscribers Think the Catalog Is Dropping Off

AllFlicks' data shows that a plurality of Netflix's U.S. subscribers believe that the quality of Netflix's library is in decline. When asked how they felt about Netflix's library, 44.6% of U.S. respondents said they felt that the catalog was “qualitatively worse than before.” Only 34.3% of respondents felt that the library had improved, while 21.2% couldn't decide one way or the either.

That's not a blowout finding, but it is a troubling sign for Netflix, which once dominated the streaming world. And when we drill down into different groups of subscribers, things get even more interesting.

The Netflix Generation Gap

AllFlicks' survey also asked respondents how long they'd been subscribing to Netflix. Breaking the data down this way, we can see that newer subscribers are more likely to be critical of Netflix's catalog.

Among subscribers who had been with Netflix for more than two years – the largest group in the sample – 35.4% felt that Netflix's library had improved. This likely includes a chunk of users who have been around since Netflix's earliest days, before they built up their catalog to its largest point. Even in this group, however, the plurality (45.2%) agreed that Netflix's catalog had gotten worse.

Newer subscribers were much more critical. Among subscribers who had been with Netflix 1-2 years and 0-1 years, just 25.0% and 25.6% (respectively) thought Netflix was improving. The major difference among these respondents came in the number of “unsure” responses, which ballooned to 41.0% among the 0-1 years bracket – a plurality of respondents. It makes sense that the most recent subscribers would be less qualified to say how Netflix's library is trending, but the 1-2 years bracket is an interesting and informative slice to look at: they're the subscribers who joined when Netflix was already in a pitched battle with its competition.

It's likely that many subscribers see the quality of Netflix's library over time as a bell curve – low at first, building into a golden age, and then dropping off again as competition emerged. That's a theory that's backed up by some of the comments respondents made. “I have been a subscriber to Netflix since before streaming was available,” one respondent wrote. “Streaming is better than it was a long time ago, but it's currently the worst that it's been in the last two years.”

One of Many

So what does this all mean? It could mean that Netflix is starting to look a lot less like the king of streaming to modern subscribers. Long-term subscribers may be split on the issue, but an awful lot of recent subscribers are unimpressed with Netflix's trajectory. One respondent wrote that Netflix needed “less original content being pushed down my throat.”

This doesn't mean Netflix is doomed. Netflix enjoyed what was essentially a monopoly on streaming content for some time. Now, the market is rebalancing. We've seen Netflix shrink in the U.S., grow overseas, and focus on original content. When all is said and done, Netflix may not be the king of streaming anymore – it may just be one of many streaming options.