Will The INTERNET Be The One ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To Control Them All? Should I Concentrate My Entertainment Business On The Internet?

According to GlobeNewswire (globenewswire.com), the global Entertainment Industry was worth US$ 2305860 million in 2021 and is projected to reach US$ 3550210 million in 2028 with a CAGR of 5.9% for 2022 to 2028.

This financial statistic proves just how important entertainment is to many people. This is because for many, actual life can be boring, hard and so on that they need an escape from reality of which entertainment provides.

For a long time now, global online entertainment has been exploding. It reached a value of about US$ 297.5 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach US$ 865.6 billion in 2027 with a CAGR of 18.8% from 2023 to 2028 (Source: expertmarketresearch.com)

But not everyone is happy with the success of the online entertainment industry. Other forms of entertainment like sports, television, radio, live entertainment and so on have been going down in earnings due to online entertainment.

Live performance is the oldest form of entertainment. Think of tribal people entertaining themselves with songs, dances, storytelling and more over the tribe’s campfire. To this day, this still happens in a modern form but entertainers are facing a dilemma.

For ages now, there have been consistent articles both in printed and online media about the theatre industry dying a slow death. For example, the world famous Met Opera in the US only fills about 75% of its audience capacity before the pandemic.

After the pandemic, it is now down to 61%. The same is true for live concerts. Even before the pandemic, many artists are being forced to abandon concert touring due to its unprofitability with lackluster earnings, escalating costs and the sheer difficulty of organizing one.

Even live sports entertainment is taking a beating from its offspring: videogames. Live sports entertainment attendance have been steadily going down while the user base of videogames have been growing exponentially.

If you’re an entertainer who is considering offering live entertainment, you should consider that you may actually lose money instead of earning money. Other live entertainment artists have localized their territories to certain areas only to cut down on logistics costs.

We all know that the printed newspaper industry have been decimated by the internet. This is because much smaller and nimbler media content producers online can make news and other entertainment at a fraction of the cost as compared to printed media.

Online content is more direct and informative too. For example, you don’t need to buy a fashion magazine to know what’s going on in the world of fashion. Thousands and maybe even millions of fashion themed websites can give more precise content based on your desires.

But it is to be said that despite the emergence of audiobooks and ebooks the traditional printed book is still holding its own in sales. But for how long? Maybe not in a decade or so, but the writing is on the wall: books would all have a digital version soon.

There are other benefits of online content over traditional printed content. Online content can be interactive and you can also store all your entertainment media content on a single digital device which can fit in your pocket like a smartphone.

Also, your online entertainment content can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. If you ever have sentimentalities about printed media, I suggest you banish the notion in your mind. Digital entertainment media is fully the way to go.

It has been going down for the vast majority of movie theater owners. When movie theaters were still new back then, going to them were considered prestigious events. People would wore their best clothes and treated going to movie theaters as a social event.

But this is in the past. The standards of the movie theaters and the movie going public has gone down which resulted in movie ticket sales going down. Movie goers complain of going to movie theaters which are dirty with broken down chairs and so on.

Movie goers also complain about other movie goers. There are movie goers that are loud, obnoxious and unruly. This is the reason why when televisions got bigger and better and when Internet movie streaming was introduced, many movie goers opted to watch movies at home.

But this is not the only problem with movie theaters. Online video content which can be found in the likes of YouTube, TikTok and so on have proven that people liked shorter and more diverse entertainment content.

Movies which are more than an hours long are starting to get outmoded especially with more and more people watching entertaining educational content. If you want to produce movie entertainment, consider that there are a lot of YouTubers making good money with much shorter videos.

During their heyday, radios were considered family entertainment. Entire families would huddle near their radios to listen to music, radio serials and so on. In fact, surviving old radio serials are being turned to YouTube video content for audio listening.

I don’t know if these same old radio serials are also being turned to podcasts because they would make great podcast materials. However, we must also face the reality that radio has been supplanted a long time ago by television.

To be fair, radio entertainment content still survives today in many forms. As has been said, old radio serials are being turned to YouTube videos as audio media. There are also websites that run radio broadcasts in radio themed websites.

But radio or audio content is now taking on many forms: music streaming, audiobooks, podcasts and videos with audio only content. You could say that audio content is thriving because not everyone can watch a video all the time but can listen to audio all the time.

If you are producing online content and it so happens that the user needs to look at your online content to consume it, I suggest you make it audio friendly as well so that the user can consume your content by only hearing it. This could be a more profitable approach.

You just need for example to Google the search keywords: “how much audience have television lost” to find the answer to this question. The answer is a resounding “Yes”, television viewership is indeed going down and together with it is the television studio’s ad revenues.

While it can be stated that television is still the king of entertainment mediums, the fact of the matter is that the revenues of television networks have been going down. For one, television ads are very expensive and does not really reach the targeted consumers.

Back then, television supplanted radio to become the new king of entertainment mediums. Television further exploded in popularity with the introduction of cable television. But soon, consumers became wary of the high cost of subscribing to different networks.

Then YouTube came along which was free and offered a more diverse and more informative content. There are in fact many people who hardly watch television if they ever do and just watch YouTube videos for their news, entertainment, sports, music and so on.

Even the television industry acknowledges this by putting some or even all of their entertainment content online. YouTube can even be more profitable than television as Mr. Beast’s billion dollar valuation proves it.

The internet is already the emerging king and might even be the final destination for all forms of entertainment media content. This is of course can be undone if somehow Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta platform takes off.

Unlike all the other forms of entertainment media discussed before, the internet has the capability of accommodating all these previously mentioned entertainment mediums and more. There are even entertainment companies that are totally based online with no physical offices.

Also, the internet is a creator’s paradise with little to no gatekeeping from anyone. For example, if you produce entertainment content that is sexual in nature you can get blocked or even banned from traditional media but you can find media platforms online that would accept you.

At the moment also, the internet is threatening to overtake both radio and television in terms of coverage. At present, 65% of the world’s population have access to the internet and anyone can be an online content producer.

Consider also that Elon Musk and his StarLink company are not the only ones offering space based internet connectivity. Other companies are competing with him to propagate fast internet on every corner of the world.

1) Smartphones: Other factors are also fast driving the march towards an internet only based entertainment. Not everyone owns a real radio or television but almost everyone owns a smartphone which are continuously going down in price every year.

With a smartphone, you have the capabilities of watching/hearing radio, television, movie theater and other entertainment content right in the palm of your own hand. All you need is an internet connection. In some instances, you don’t even need an internet connection.

2) Animation Entertainment Content: This kind of entertainment is very popular especially with young people. For example, the Japanese Anime Industry has been growing exponentially each year. Most animation content can be found on the internet and not television.

3) Videogame Entertainment Content: The videogame industry is bigger than the Hollywood or the music entertainment industry combined together. Again, videogame entertainment these days can largely be accessed only via an internet connection.

4) Social Media Entertainment Content: It has enabled anyone to be an entertainer. All you need at the minimum is to say a few words online, maybe attach an image on it and this would be considered entertainment. The internet has enabled this form of entertainment as well.

As it stands, the internet is poised to consume all the other forms of entertainment media which is good and bad news for entertainment producers. Good: it allows you to offer all forms of entertainment on a nearly global basis.

Bad: The internet made it possible for anyone to be an entertainer. There is hardly a gatekeeper preventing you from becoming an entertainer. The bad news is that you would be facing a lot of competition because anyone now can be an entertainer.

You might also like to read the article:

What Can You Learn From The Videogame Industry Giants Of Today?

“In 2021 alone, the global videogame industry had a whopping US$ 180 billion in revenue. In fact the videogame industry is bigger than Hollywood and the Music industry combined in terms of revenue...”