By Joe Gumm | Director of Communications injii
The stats on streaming are everywhere.
In fact, the stats are so overwhelmingly undeniable, it feels as if they are taunting companies to take advantage.
In a recent Forbes article titled, “Americans Are Spending More Time Listening To Music Than Ever Before”, Americans clicked the play button on 184 billion songs with on-demand streaming outlets such as Spotify and Apple Music. That was only midway through 2017. Incredibly, it was a 62% increase from the same period a year before.
In the meantime, an NPR article recently asked “Is Netflix On Its Way To World Domination Of Streaming?” The company now has 125 million paying subscribers worldwide.
Of course, we can’t forget about the 800-pound gorilla in the room, YouTube. When subscribers aren’t listening to Beyonce, or streaming the latest murder-mystery podcast or watching the latest episodes of Stranger Things or House of Cards, they are on sites like YouTube. YouTube users watch more than 6 billion hours of video per month. I know this because: A.) I looked up the stat on Mill For Business.com, and B.) my two youngest daughters (ages 10 and 8) contribute to that stat everyday after school when they arrive home and watch slime videos. You get the point. People are subscribing, watching, streaming, clicking, logging on, sharing, liking, copying, posting, supporting, commenting and appointment watching anything and everything online and they are doing so with all sorts of devices. Again, the stats are everywhere and the numbers are expanding on a wide-reaching, wide-ranging basis.
The question is now, what does this mean for your company? It means data and lots of data. It means spending more on advertising and marketing to reach certain types of demographics in certain types of areas on certain days and at certain times. Not only that, it means going beyond engagement with advertising and marketing. Well, what exactly does “going beyond engagement” look like? Offering bundle services? No. Offering inexpensive subscriptions? Nope (that’s nice though). Offering better quality content? A great start, but nuh-uh.
As major platforms in the streaming space continue to add users in the millions each month, there is one thing these companies don’t offer their growing list of subscribers. These traditional streaming platforms only compensate content creators by paying them for site traffic or for ad spots, making value generation a one-way street that rewards clickbait. There will be an explosion of streaming services available for the masses in 2018, so instead of thinking about offering content only, companies should be thinking about what is going to really drive consumers back to their platforms…where the masses benefit as well. Disney will certainly try to figure out what that is in 2019 when the company launches a streaming service. FX (Fox’s cable network option) is hoping their commercial-free streaming option (FX+) monthly price of $5.99 will be enough to lure people. AMC and others will offer similar services trying to set themselves apart from the others, with each company believing going lower on price will end up capturing the most viewers. Unfortunately, it won’t.
