Seen, heard, discovered: How European content shows up on Amazon

As European policymakers debate the visibility of local and diverse cultural content in the digital environment, one question stands out: in a world of virtually limitless catalogues, does local content actually get seen?

Prime Video and Amazon Music promote European content through dedicated editorial choices, including named homepage rows for European films and series, curated playlists featuring local artists, and placement decisions made by local teams. An independent analysis of Prime Video and Amazon Music homepages in France and Germany found that European works account for more than a third of everything customers see on both services, far exceeding the local content users listen to and view. This visibility for French, German, and other European content holds even when users watch only non-European material. These results reflect Amazon's growing investment in European creators and audiences, and what audiences want to watch and hear.

Streaming has removed many of the traditional barriers to accessing culture. A Prime Video homepage in Germany, France, or other EU country surfaces over 10,000 unique local and European titles. The sheer scale of choice available today is unprecedented, but access alone isn't enough. What matters to European customers is whether European works achieve meaningful visibility within that choice.

To find out, we asked Arvester, a Paris-based consultancy specialising in the cultural industries, to independently measure the discoverability of local and European content on Prime Video and Amazon Music in France and Germany. Their methodology relied on qualitative metadata from independent sources (The Movie Database, a crowdsourced film metadata encyclopaedia, and MusicBrainz, an open music metadata encyclopaedia), multiple user profiles with different viewing habits, weekly homepage scans over eight weeks, and a scoring system rating every thumbnail — the visual tiles clicked to access a video, song or artist — by position and size. Nearly 1.5 million thumbnails were analysed across France and Germany combined.

The findings point to clear conclusions, which reinforce our editorial practices to promote European content across Prime Video and Amazon Music. Regulatory discussions around discoverability of content should avoid creating obstacles to existing investments in and support for European cultural and creative industries.

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Prime Video shows a disproportionately high number of European titles on the homepage when compared with the viewing choices, encouraging customers to choose European content. This is reflected in the success of German series Maxton Hall, the most streamed title in Germany with top Prime Video rankings in 120 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

Arvester’s research into discoverability of local and European content on Amazon services and viewership data from the European Audiovisual Observatory show that:

1. French productions rank second in terms of discoverability on Prime Video in France, behind only content produced in the United States. In France, French titles represent 18% of homepage thumbnails compared to a 7% share of total viewing hours across all subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) providers, which comprise streaming services including Prime Video.
2. In Germany, German titles represent 13% of homepage thumbnails compared to a 6% total SVOD viewing share. German productions rank third on Prime Video in Germany, behind only content produced in the United States and the United Kingdom.
3. European works represent 39% of all thumbnails in France and 37% in Germany.
4. Prime Video dedicates named homepage rows exclusively to European content (“Séries européennes,” “Europäische Filme,” “Made in Europe”), which is the only geographic region given this kind of editorial spotlight.
5. The vast majority of what viewers see on Prime Video comes from third-party producers, studios, distributors and add-on channels. Amazon MGM Studios productions represent approximately 4% of Prime Video homepage thumbnails in both territories.

On Amazon Music, European artists feature prominently in the homepage experience and dozens of artists from France like Vianney, Germany such as Ellice, and other European countries are not only the most-streamed local artists but also reach listeners globally from the US to Canada, Mexico, and Japan, among other countries. Moreover:

1. Nearly twice as many French artists appear on the homepage, with 44% of thumbnails, compared to US artists that represent 25% of the visual tiles.
2. German artists account for 33% in Germany, on par with 34% for US artists.

Photo by Miguel Rubio

Perhaps the most striking finding is that even when users watched or listened exclusively to non-European content, local discoverability held firm.

1. In Germany, after eight consecutive weeks of watching only non-European titles, German content never once dropped below its initial share of homepage thumbnails, holding steady at 12–13% throughout.
2. In France, French titles represented 17% of homepage thumbnails before any viewing took place, and was at 20% after eight weeks of exclusively non-European viewing (a minor variation reflecting normal editorial rotation rather than a response to viewing behaviour).
3. On Amazon Music, users who selected zero local artists during onboarding saw 28% German or 35% French artist content on their homepage after eight weeks of listening.

This shows that local and European works remain easy to discover, which reflects customer demand for local content and the deliberate editorial choices made by our local teams in France and Germany.

These findings only tell part of the story. Local and European content reach their audience through many touchpoints: direct and physical avenues such as concerts, theatres, cinemas and galleries; social settings such as schools and cafés; and via myriad distribution channels from the printed press to radio, television, and social media, among others.

Prime Video and Amazon Music play a distinct and complementary role to these cultural avenues. Our services help extend local content's reach to the 137 million Europeans living in rural areas; bring a French- or German-language series to audiences across the world; and provide independent artists access to listeners they could never have reached through traditional channels alone.

This visibility doesn't happen by accident. Behind the numbers sits a combination of editorial expertise — choices made by local teams in France and Germany about what to spotlight, where to place it, and which creators to support — and personalisation technology that responds to what audiences want to watch and hear. Our local music curation experts champion both emerging and established local artists, while our editorial teams select and position content that reflects what local audiences want to see. Named rows for European content, curated playlists featuring local artists, and prominent placement for emerging talent are all the result of deliberate editorial decisions.

Prime Video and Amazon Music participate in the discoverability of European content — not by replacing the work of others, but by amplifying it and removing barriers to connect creators and audiences.

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Ultimately, what shapes our editorial choices is straightforward: our customers. We design our services to match what audiences want to watch and listen to — and customer feedback shows that audiences want local and European content. They seek out French films, German music, emerging artists from their own country. Our job is to understand those preferences and surface what's relevant — through a combination of editorial expertise and responsive technology.

Any regulatory approach that substitutes audience demand with top-down mandates risks distorting the experience for audiences and diminishing the reach of artists and creators. The best guarantee of cultural visibility is a service people actually use.

This audit was commissioned by Amazon and independently conducted by Arvester during November 2025 – March 2026. Read the full reports for France and Germany on Arvester's website.