Why is there nothing to watch on streaming services?
Finding shows and films to watch are a hassle in itself.
The struggle
It’s a Friday night, and you’re looking for something watch with your partner or family. You spend a few minutes browsing through the “Trending” section then start scrolling down to some other recommendations.
The service recommends content by genre, similar to (TV show you watched in the past), or even “popular in your country or region.”
Finding what to watch is a common problem for anyone who has a subscription to a streaming service, not just limited to Netflix. Many other streaming services base their recommendations solely on genre, popularity, and past viewing history.
When you finally find a movie you like, you often have to try the first few minutes to find out whether or not it is worth your time. The other choice is to go on Google and search for reviews written by people who have already seen the film.
Of course, there are other issues with searching for reviews. Is it suitable for a family movie night? Does it contain violence or sexual scenes? Is the plot of the movie too scary/traumatizing/sad or offensive? Why waste time watching something that you won’t fully enjoy?
Now flooded with so many choices of movies and TV shows — people don’t have the time to watch it all, and to be honest, nobody wants to waste their time watching something that doesn’t interest them. Unless you are a professional film critic, maybe.The failure of Movie Recommendations
Movie recommendations are pretty hard to trust, especially because everyone has a different perspective.
Take the movie The Nightmare before Christmas for example. If I loved this movie the obvious recommendations for this movie would be movies like The Corpse Bride or Coraline. However, fans of the movie would also say that the movie has a ton of amazing musical numbers that make the movie so much better. People who loved the music would also love movies like Encanto or Coco, and those who love 90s-style stop motion would also love movies like Wallace and Gromit.
The limits of streaming services today often only limit recommendations to the most obvious and one-dimensional ones. It limits our chances to discover movies we truly might like — making us feel like “there is nothing to watch.”
So now what, what should I watch?
Due to the complexity of movies and all their aspects, it’s almost impossible for someone to recommend a movie based on a single word or phrase. This is why streaming services like to use information on past viewing history, age, and region to make better guesses about what their viewers would like.
However, there is a better alternative to movie recommendations that allows you to search for movies based on your true personal interests. Movie Deep Search allows you to go further into specific attributes of films such as lighting, theme, plot, character, and even emotional response to find the movies you really want.
This means you can find this:
add on to your query as you go, take a deep dive into what your favorite movies are and find what to watch with just a few prompts.
With professional insight and detailed categorization, Deep Search helps you solve the question “why is there nothing to watch?” by giving you true insight into what you love. Perhaps the reason we aren’t satisfied with the variety of our streaming services could just be that we aren’t looking in the right way.
Find Deep Search on Product Hunt, or on our official website Available for use starting from Feb. 19, 2023.
