Current buzz about Video On Demand Services

Video-on- demand services; Hula, Netflix, Amazon prime, YouTube Red and a lot more; these are the names of a revolution in the industry of entertainment. This revolution is a ray of sunshine for consumer as well as production houses. All you need is a Smartphone and a decent internet connection and these services will give you the control of your entertainment. You can choose when and where you want to go through an episode of friends or what the status of winter in Westeros is. A system in which viewers choose their own entertainment and not necessarily according the program’s network air time.

Content is typically, but not limited to, current and past television shows, movies, and the networks’ original Content. Viewers can watch on-demand shows:
 Online through a network’s website.
 On a streaming video service like Netflix, amazon prime, hotstar, YouTube
etc.
These Apps have given a daunting challenge to existing monopoly of television content in India. Adult demographic occupies a majority of targeted group for Entertainment industry, and this section is shifting towards Hollywood content, which is a good thing for these apps as Hollywood content occupies most of their repertoire. To tackle all these challenges, conventional TV channel are also making their presence felt in the digital domain with Apps like Yupp Tv, Ditto Tv, ALT Digital, HBO now etc. All the content of the channel is at the disposal of the user with the feature of watching the shows in offline mode.

VoD services have also acted as an impetus for the Advertising industry because of their Revenue model being Ads based. As a result, there is a wide variety of opportunities for advertisers to connect with different audiences. Affordability is one of the main advantage of VoD service. You are no longer obliged to pay for direct to home services on an annual basis, or spend for movie tickets at multiplexes. VoD platforms have also facilitated access to quality content. International shows can now be seen legally, and without censorship. This is also considered a move against torrenting and piracy, which was made obvious with the new Ad campaign of Hotstar with tagline “Torrent Morghulis”.

These platforms have also become a platform for shows about contemporary themes like homosexuality, start-up culture, feminism and many more things, which are not suitable for Conventional Tv.
Amongst all the apps, some are free and some can only be accessed through paid membership like Netflix and amazon prime, but they too give a month free trial.

Success of these apps has one main reason that is rise in the number of smartphones in India and that too at a staggering rate. In fact, India had 400 million internet content users in 2016. In addition, the number of smartphone users is estimated to rise to 700 million in by 2020. Another reason should be increase in consumption of mobile data, which was made possible because of the bold move by Jio Reliance. They made it possible for every Aam Aadmi to have access to the world of internet and every other service provider followed the way.

It is obvious that this trend is on the rise, but it’s still too early to predict how it will change the quality of Alternate content. All we can do is wait and watch whatever we want on any of these apps.

)