Amazon spent $13bn on film, TV and music content in 2021

Spending was up by roughly 18 per cent compared to 2020

Amazon spent a staggering $13bn (£12.6bn) on film, TV and music content throughout 2021, it has been revealed.

The streaming giant’s spending rose by roughly 18 per cent compared to the previous year, although this was a significantly smaller year-on-year increase than one year previously.

In 2020, the company spent $11bn, an increase of 40 per cent compared to 2019.

Among the high-profile series to have debuted on Amazon Prime Video are Jeremy Clarkson’s agricultural reality series Clarkson’s Farm, the Barry Jenkins miniseries The Underground Railroad and fantasy epic The Wheel of Time.

Also in the pipeline is a hotly anticipated Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, which is reported in many places to be the most expensive per-episode TV show ever made.

Thuso Mbedu in ‘The Underground Railroad’ (Kyle Kaplan/Amazon Studios)

On Thursday (3 February), Amazon announced that it was raising subscription prices for Prime membership in the US, providing its investment in “high-quality digital entertainment” as a factor.

The total video and music expenditure including the licencing and production costs related to Prime Video content, as well as costs relating to digital subscription and sold/rented digital content.