If the fact that it's increasingly difficult to pry our eyes away from our screens is any indication, media and entertainment is an unstoppable sector. Whether people are listening, watching, or interacting, the category is now global, digital, and growing at an impressive pace. Within the next few years, it is likely to be transformed by innovations rapidly displacing our current likes and trends—and prompting complex questions about content ownership and responsibility.
Perhaps the upswing in broadband adoption, as a means of facilitating video calls and remote classes for homebound consumers, has enabled the next surge: soaring demand for over-the-top (OTT) media, including connected TV and video on demand, either ad supported or subscription based. The latter surpassed cable and broadcast TV in 2022, and today, Disney+, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount+, and Amazon Prime Video are powerhouses at creating original content. But they are competing for eyeballs with lower cost content from independent creators whose TV-like experiences are algorithm driven on social media networks with minimal payouts— or now can be delivered via a direct connection with users, giving content owners control over their own revenue streams.
In other media, innovators are turning to newer technologies to create the next can't-miss experiences. In just two years, augmented reality (AR) is expected to be frequently used by nearly 75 percent of the global population and almost all smartphone users. Livestream shopping is big in China and catching on globally, with many shoppers already seeing its value for visualizing potential purchases.
Gaming is an established career option with billions of dollars at stake in international prizes and sponsorships. And music fans are buying non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to invest in artists, while those artists may be using AI and machine learning to create songs and are hold- ing concerts in the metaverse.
However, with technological advances come inevitable questions for business, government, and society—perhaps most pressing in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which among its myriad uses can drive AR experiences and generate content.
Creating the next ChatGPT may pay off, whether it comes from a global leader or startup, but with human-machine collaboration come questions like who owns the content, and can it be copyrighted and sold? How is such co-created content used in training models, and how will new technologies disrupt or evolve existing platforms? How can marketers and advertisers predict which platform or marketing strategy to adopt, or even keep up? And, more important, how can protections be created quickly enough to avoid scams and other forms of harm?
As technologies evolve, the digital media and technology industries are ripe for innovation. Keeping up with the latest trends and under- standing the various technologies available will be crucial for businesses looking to capitalize on these opportunities