[This is my fourth article for My Smart Life, an initiative by Nokia India that features guest authors from various walks of life who have made use of technology and social media in their work and life. Go to the website to check out rest of the articles there.]
Why would you go to a video sharing website only to hear music? I mean, you have so many music streaming websites and the quality of the audio is pretty much good there but still I see so many people accessing YouTube to hear music. Perhaps it is because over a period of time, YouTube has become the complete online entertainment channel of the world. You need to hear music? Go to YouTube. Need to watch comedy? A television show that you missed last night? A movie snippet that you would want to keep watching again and again? A live show recording? There, you have it all on YouTube.
It is quite interesting to take a look at how the traditional entertainment forms have made way to the new generation digital entertainment media. There was a time when a television set was a rarity. If there was one family that had a TV set, all other people in the neighborhood would go there to watch Ramayan, Mahabharath or Chitrahar. I’m sure many of us have such memories from those good old days. It was a good social experience back then. Many people in the neighborhood came and spent time together, discussed the news as they appeared on TV, or talked about music or movies while they watched it together. But the personal space and privacy were seriously lacking. With the increased purchasing power, people started buying their own music system and television sets. This paved way to have entertainment at the privacy of home space. But the revolution in the entertainment media did not just stop there.
The arrival of digital entertainment media has completely redefined the word entertainment. It took out the time and space restrictions of entertainment and put it on-the-go. So if you are bored when you are boarded on train, you could just switch on your iPod or Zune and hear music or watch a movie. With the newest mobile phones like Nokia E7, you wouldn’t even need to have a separate device and can do it all on your mobile phone. Just imagine how the features of a smart phone with a 3G connection could change your access to entertainment. You wouldn’t even need to store music or a favorite show episode on your device because you would rather connect to Internet from your mobile phone using your 3G connection and would have effortless online streaming of entertainment.
Digital entertainment mediums have not only changed the way people watched videos, but it has also helped creative people to come up with fresh new ideas, present it before people and become online celebrities eventually. One good example here would be Rocketboom. Rocketboom is a video blog with daily news snippets with a touch of humor. It was started out in 2004 and now reportedly has 400,000 video episode downloads a day. With just three people, a small room, a video camera and an unconventional, creative approach, see how far they have gotten.
Well, this is not just about pre-recorded content. Now there are several websites like Livestream, UStream etc that offer live video streaming. YouTube last year had launched their alpha version of live streaming with Rocketboom with live comment option. So now you don’t have to scream “Hey, run and switch on that TV fast! I will miss that breaking news” because you could just go to YouTube on your mobile phone and watch live news.
Just imagine what this whole thing could mean in the future. You will see many citizen powered media channels, giving you fresh and original content with an unconventional touch. This will eventually force the established media houses to seriously think about revamping the way they present news and entertainment. Set top boxes and DTH could be a thing of the past since Internet TVs are already out in the market and the pre-recorded material could be broadcast through channels like YouTube. TV channels could directly charge the customers for a particular show, an episode, per day or per month basis. Movie channels could be a thing of past too, when the studios would directly make the films available online and can charge the users. They could even generate revenue by making half portion of the movie streaming for free and then charge the viewers to watch the rest. This would put the deciding power to the people and could even put a stop to illegal online video streaming.
The result is more power to the people. More fair business. And a better world.