Netflix Data Analysis

Capstone Project 4: Netflix Data Analysis

C4.1 Project Overview

This project analyzes Netflix's content catalog to understand genre distribution, content growth over time, and the balance between movies and TV shows.

C4.2 Business Problem

Netflix's content strategy team wants to understand what type of content has been added over the years and which genres dominate the platform, to guide future content investment decisions.

C4.3 Dataset Description

Column	Description
title	Name of the movie/show
type	Movie or TV Show
genre	Primary genre category
date_added	Date the title was added to Netflix
release_year	Year the title was originally released

Sample scope: ~3,100 titles spanning content added between 2015-2025.

C4.4 Objectives

Identify the most common genres on the platform
Analyze how much content has been added year over year
Compare the split between Movies and TV Shows
Recommend content strategy directions based on findings

C4.5 Step-by-Step Solution

Step 1: Load the Netflix titles CSV into Pandas
Step 2: Clean missing genre/date values
Step 3: Count titles per genre and rank them
Step 4: Extract year from date_added and count titles added per year
Step 5: Calculate the Movies vs TV Shows percentage split
Step 6: Visualize all three findings and summarize insights

C4.6 Complete Python Code

► netflix_analysis.py

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

df = pd.read_csv("netflix_titles.csv")
df = df.dropna(subset=['genre','date_added'])

df['date_added'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date_added'])
df['year_added'] = df['date_added'].dt.year

genre_counts = df['genre'].value_counts()
yearly_additions = df.groupby('year_added').size()
type_split = df['type'].value_counts(normalize=True) * 100

print("Top Genre:", genre_counts.index[0])
print("Movies vs TV Shows %:\n", type_split.round(1))

C4.7 Expected Output

Output

Top Genre: Drama
Movies vs TV Shows %:
Movies 69.0
TV Shows 31.0

C4.8 Visualizations

Figure C4.1 — Number of Netflix titles by genre.

Figure C4.2 — Content added to Netflix per year (2015-2025).

Figure C4.3 — Split between Movies and TV Shows.

C4.9 Key Insights

Drama is by far the most common genre (850 titles), nearly 40% more than the next closest genre, Comedy.
Content additions grew rapidly from 2015-2022, then plateaued — suggesting the platform has shifted from aggressive library expansion to more selective content investment.
Movies dominate at 69% of the catalog vs 31% TV Shows, though TV Shows often drive longer viewer engagement per title.

C4.10 Business Recommendations

Given the plateau in content additions, focus future investment on quality and exclusivity rather than sheer catalog volume.
Consider growing the TV Shows share, since serialized content tends to improve subscriber retention through multi-episode engagement.
Explore underrepresented genres (Romance, Thriller) as potential differentiation opportunities against competitors saturated with Drama content.