Netflix just keeps on adding new subscribers

Netflix just keeps on growing.

The streaming media company posted its Q4 earnings for 2018 on Thursday. Netflix shared that it added 29 million paid subscribers for the entirety of the year. That’s 33 percent higher than what the company added the previous year.

In 2017, Netflix added 22 million paid subscribers. This put its total subscriber count at more than 117.5 million. One year later, the service now boasts about 146.5 million subscribers.

When broken down for the fourth quarter alone, Netflix blew past its own projections. The company added 8.8 million total paid memberships worldwide. U.S. subscribers accounted for 1.5 million of them. International subscribers made up the other 7.3 million. Netflix previously estimated it would add 7.6 million new subscribers total last quarter.

It wasn’t all good news for Netflix, however. The company fell a bit short on Wall Street’s Q4 revenue projections causing its shares to drop. Netflix reported revenue of $4.49 billion.

Thanks to increased competition in the streaming media market from services such as Hulu and Prime Video, Netflix has been spending more money on producing original content. Free services like the newly launched IMDB Freedive and subscription networks that are launching soon, such as Disney+ and an NBCUniversal offering, will continue to put pressure on Netflix to offer more.

Just days ago, in a move likely made to offset its increasing content costs, Netflix announced it largest subscription price increase ever.

It’s important to note, though, just how much bigger Netflix is when compared to its competitors. Netflix alone consumes a mindblowing 15 percent of global internet traffic according to a report in October of last year.

As Netflix continue to expand internationally, its subscriber number, as well as the amount of data the service eats up, will only continue to grow.