Media and Entertainment – Tech Trends in 2022

The use of cutting-edge technology to create and distribute content is an ongoing process in the media and entertainment industries. Changes in consumer behavior and demands, along with continuous and rapid technological advancements, are reshaping the medical and entertainment industries. Technology is the key to driving these changes, from sophisticated special effects to streaming video platforms to online news and music.

The COVID-19 pandemic played a big role in accelerating innovations and driving the changes in technology advancements. This has paved the way for new and better ways for the media and entertainment to reach out to a global audience.

Some of the Top Technologies that are Trending for the Media and Entertainment Industry in 2022

Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR and VR)

These technologies have changed the course of media and entertainment by blurring the borders between reality and fantasy, and have brought the physical and digital domains closer than before, enhancing the user experience. These technologies are being used more and more because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have managed to replace in-person interactions with digital connections in entertainment, personal, and professional areas in many instances. The global AR/VR market is expected to grow to US$ 766 billion by 2025, an increase at a CAGR of 73.7%.

D2C Video Streaming

The COVID-19 pandemic saw lockdowns across the globe. Since in-person entertainment was not a possibility, access to digital entertainment and diverse video content rose dramatically. OTT platforms were in high demand, with platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu in particular. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PWC) Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, global streaming video revenues will be approximately US $194 billion by 2025, a 60% increase.

Blockchain

Blockchain’s ledger technology is a game changer for the media and entertainment industries. The use of blockchain helps eliminate bad links, improve digital rights management, and create a transparent system for all participants, including authors and advertisers. Digital piracy, counterfeit copies, intellectual property rights infringement, and other issues have cost the US film and television industries an estimated $71 billion per year. The use of non-fungible or exchangeable tokens (NFTs), which are digital certificates of authenticity that confirm the uniqueness and assist in issues dealing with copyrights of any given art, game, movie, music, etc. Since the information copyright is available in the public distributed registry, the ownership of the asset is always known and piracy can be eliminated. Some of the use cases of blockchain technology in this industry are peer-to-peer sales and content distribution, streamlined royalty payments, usage-based billing models, etc.

Artificial Intelligence

The use of AI in the media and entertainment industry is helping make visual content more interactive and interesting and providing more immersive, personalized, and automated content to the viewers. With a breakthrough in machine learning, AI like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant has made the leap from sci-fi movies to consumers’ homes.

Platforms for Streaming Music

The havoc created by the COVID-19 pandemic saw the cancellation of music tours, concerts, and album releases. This pushed the hot platforms to the forefront, with artists and listeners flocking to them. Music streaming services like Spotify, Amazon, and Apple Music offer paid unrestricted access to their music libraries, and music tracks can be downloaded or streamed over mobile or WiFi networks.

The Metaverse

Gartner estimates that by the year 2026, approximately 25% of people will spend at least 1 hour a day in the Metaverse for work, shopping, education, social media, and entertainment. The Metaverse can be thought of as the next version of the internet—a collective virtual space that is created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. It is an independent virtual economy that is enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Some of the activities that can take place in the Metaverse

• Buying clothes and accessories for the virtual avatars
• purchase of land and construction of digital homes.
• participation in virtual social experiences.
• Immersive learning via virtual classrooms
• purchase of digital art, collectibles, and assets like NFTs.

The Metaverse is expected to provide persistent, decentralized, collaborative, and interoperable opportunities and business models that would enable companies and organizations to extend digital business.

Social Media

Social media keeps on evolving as the younger generation moves on to the next big thing from the existing social media platforms. Social media 2.0 can be defined as the attempt to overcome some of the negative aspects that have come to be identified with traditional social media, which include data and privacy concerns, identity theft, fake news, etc. The times are prompting a shift from traditional platforms to platforms where content can be packaged into bite-sized, shareable chunks that can be discussed and rated.

The Creator Economy

It is expected that the traditional, mass-market forms of media and entertainment will lose traction and market to more personalized, niche, and community-driven media, which is known as the creator economy. The amount of money that is paid to creators and influencers via the Patreon platform doubled from US$ 1 billion in 2020 to US$ 2 billion in 2021, a sign that audiences are more comfortable connecting directly with their favorite creators and influencers.

Connecting with a media software development company having a track record in the development of new world technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, etc., and a track record for delivering professional, successful projects is the best bet for showcasing an organization’s trending ideas into reality.