Back To The Future
The millennials, it seems, are a particularly nostalgic bunch. With that generation getting older and more sentimental, we are seeing a revival of traditional media & entertainment business models. This doesn’t mean that everything will go back to how it was in the 80's and early 90's, but at least it is an opportunity for new businesses to flourish and cater to this particular revival trend.
Let’s look at what’s happening with different segments.
Music
Vinyl is now bringing more revenue than ad-based streaming, according to the latest RIAA report. In fact, vinyl is growing faster than subscription-based streaming. If it continues, it will soon surpass the entire streaming industry – although there is a “novelty” factor in vinyl that may slow down in the short term.
Then you have Apple launching Beats 1, a 24/7 online radio station broadcast worldwide. While we may not be seeing again whole families sitting around a radio set, tuning to the same station as other families, we do have a lot of people listening to the same content, at the same time, and using social media to engage with each other. Drake recently premiered on Beats 1 its anticipated mix tape with Future, a couple of hours before being available for sale exclusively (for one week) on iTunes. Correlation may not imply causation but the album quickly flew to #1.
Gaming
As children born in the formative era of video games come into the complex world of adulthood, they find themselves drawn to the past – drawn to a simpler time – and video games provide such an outlet. Within the last few years there has been a growth of retro gaming stores and markets opening around the world. Large retailers like GameStop, smelling an additional and much needed revenue opportunity, are also joining the wave. Consequently, prices for these sometimes rare games are going through the roof.
The classic Sinclair ZX Spectrum, my first computer and one of the better gaming machines of all time, has recently been revived through a very successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo (the £100k goal was met in just two days). Speaking of crowdfunding, remember Ultima or Monkey Island? Their creators launched extremely successful campaigns on Kickstarter, to fund new games: Lord British with Shroud of the Avatar (funded with almost $2M) and Ron Gilbert with Thimbleweed Park.
Books
There has been a lot written recently about the decline, or at least, stagnation of digital books sales. One can argue that these harbingers of the eBooks doom are not seeing the big picture by not considering the growth of independent publishers. However, it seems much more difficult to argue against the slowing growth of eBooks sales, while at the same time independent bookstores are now showing signs of resurgence. The nostalgic side of me still feels that nothing compares to holding, opening and reading a good book.
TV
TV is an interesting case. Like music, on-demand streaming is now the big thing with TV. To the point where Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings predicts that “Internet TV is replacing linear TV”. But the truth is that both types of TV, Internet and old-fashioned linear, can actually coexist. See the case of Pluto TV - a multi-platform online video service that offers over 100 linear channels, for free, organized into popular common interests like Music, Sports, News and Entertainment (which includes the famous Slow TV, interestingly preceded by the 4:20 channel…). By the way, remember my last post? I would definitely watch a 24/7 eSports channel.
While on-demand TV, like Netflix and Hulu, is all about an actively engaged experience, where viewers choose what they want to watch, Pluto TV (and linear media in general) provides a “lean back” experience. Imagine when you are at home, cooking for instance, and you have the TV on, playing something in the background. This is a type of experience and media consumption that is still needed. Viewers don’t necessarily want to choose all the time what they want to watch or listen to, do not have time to regularly create playlists or, given the almost limitless content available, do not know where to start (more is less, right?).
Pluto TV is not the only example of “Internet TV meets Linear”. Earlier this year, Sony’s Crackle announced a new linear TV feature called “Always On”, which starts streaming scheduled programming whenever a user opens Crackle.
In fact, given the number of “linear” music services out there (Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Dash, etc), I would be surprised if we don’t see other Pluto-like initiatives joining an already growing group of linear TV startups like Watchup and Haystack TV - both focused on the News genre.
This is, after all, going back to the future. It does not have to be specifically about vinyl, radio, books or linear TV – but there are indeed business opportunities in media & entertainment, targeting certain demographics as they get older. It will be interesting to see what other great ideas will flourish! Arcade games meet VR? Hell yeah!