All the big entertainment apps are starting to look the same, and that’s not an accident. For a decade, platforms fought over who would dominate a single format: music, video, podcasts, audiobooks. Now, powered by AI, they’re fighting over something bigger — becoming the app you default to whenever you have time to kill, no matter what form the content takes.
There are several reasons why this is the case. The market for entertainment apps is reaching maturity, so growth has slowed, pushing companies to compete on time spent and revenue-per-user instead of new sign-ups. In addition, today’s creators often work across formats, so it makes sense to provide a home for all their content, not just one piece of it.
AI adds a third reason. It makes it easier for a single company to build and run several formats well, and the wider the content mix, the more time users spend in the app, which in turn drives both ad revenue and subscriptions.
Image Credits:Netflix
Netflix is one clear example of this trend, as the service over the past several years has added gaming, live sports and other events, and, more recently, short video clips and podcasts. The idea is to capture more of users’ time, even when there’s not a TV or movie they want to watch, as well as to find a way into the smaller bits of free time that people usually fill with scrolling social media, playing casual games, or watching TikTok or Reels.
