Physical turn up to entertainment spots
You will remember 2020 as the year everything shut down, including the cinema downtown and your favorite nightclub. That is if you will be sober enough to. The unveiling of the Covid-19 vaccine to the world was accompanied by a lot of excitement, especially from the entertainment industry. The vaccine is helping governments to go easy on the lockdowns. Entertainment businesses are reopening and it is flooding in there.
Online cloud gaming is picking up speed
It could be that this is attributed to the addiction video games are packaged with, we cannot tell for sure. Fact is, the use of gaming platforms is increasing and does not seem to end soon. The trend can only project upwards. The launch of Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 was accompanied by a lot of related activities, one of which is cloud gaming. Gaming software technology is moving too fast for the hardware to keep up. At this point, it is too expensive to be replacing your gaming hardware to support the latest games each month. Cloud helps stream the games from the source to your gadgets. Nvidia is already offering the technology, GeForce Now. Google’s is called Stadia. Sony has also developed the technology, PlayStation Now, to provide cloud gaming. Xbox’s Project X Cloud is already incorporated into Game Pass.
Tik Tok, and the likes
The speed at which social video apps and platforms are moving is mind-blowing. Just the other day, Tik Tok was unveiled. The company recently introduced Tik Tok Editor and Tik Tok Lights, which are gaining popularity. It has now been downloaded over 2.6 billion times and has a staggering 1 billion users. Facebook is giving YouTube ran for its money with its flagship brand, Facebook Watch, experiencing about 140 million users each day. Instagram, on the other hand, just integrated its video app, IGTV, into the main app. The entertainment app has been attracting millions of users.
Online video streaming
Video streaming from popular streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Video Prime has been on the rise these recent months. The two, and Hulu, have experienced a surge in subscribers who can only get so loyal. The anime based Crunchyroll is backed by over 3 million subscribers, with the number still growing. This is, not to mention, that the platform is not free. As if that is not impressive enough, Disney launched Disney+ in 2019. It is barely 18 months since the launch, and the entertainment platform has 87 million active subscribers.
Podcasts
The world has about 1.5 million podcasts with new ones showing up each day. While it is not major right now, this trend is moving up quicker than your eye blink. Gucci, Basecamp, and Microsoft are now using theirs for advertising. Wondery is buying and developing new TV-series and has attracted a lot of interest from investors and 20th Century Fox. Ringer, on the other hand, was bought by Spotify in 2020. All this high-value attention can only mean a bright future for podcasts.