Services That Have Moved Online
The way we get our entertainment has undergone a profound shift over the last decade. The trend is moving away from physical venues to remote access on our mobile devices and even televisions. Activities that once depended on physical locations like cinemas, television timetables, getting irish lottery odds, or box offices are now available through streaming services, mobile apps, and online services.
This transition has not only expanded access to entertainment to more people, who maybe couldn’t make it to a physical venue in the past, but has also made it more convenient for people who could.
Film and movies
There are many differences in how films have changed as we use streaming services more in our own homes. The first major change is that we no longer have to go to a physical film rental shop to pick a film for an evening, which has both good and bad consequences. A positive of this is that consumers have more choice over the films available to watch, and they don’t need to remember to return them on time when the rental period expires. This is because even though consumers can still rent films, the system online automatically blocks their access to the content after the rental period is over. And, people with disabilities, meaning cinemas may not be very accessible, or who have other reasons they can’t go to the cinema to watch a movie, benefit from the rise of online streaming, though. This is because they can now watch a new movie from the comfort of their own home.
On the other hand, we don’t get to make picking the film a part of the experience in the same way as we used to. People used to go to the shop to get snacks and drinks, and then go to the rental shop. This meant the process was part of the experience; it felt more tangible and real, as you could see the films and hold them whilst deciding.
The process of watching films has also changed because people are not going to the cinema now, in the same way that they used to. We are losing the element of film that used to be a communal experience, when audiences laughed or cried together at the same film, at the same time, and, crucially, in the same room.
Music
Listening to music used to be a largely analogue experience: from seeing a band play live to putting a record or a CD on to play, the internet or mobile devices didn’t used to come into the experience at all. People used to have full storage cases and cabinets of physical music recordings, whereas now people have a music streaming account like Apple Music or Spotify, which takes up no storage space at all.
The good thing about this is that it makes having an interest in music more affordable to consumers because we no longer have to buy every album or single released by artists we like. It also means we don’t need storage space for our physical copies of music, making it much more accessible for everyone to build a larger music collection and develop a broader taste in music.
One downside is that we don’t own much music anymore. If the companies that own streaming services shut down, we wouldn’t really have access to any music. Despite having paid for accounts for years, we are basically renting music, which we could lose at any time.
Buying tickets to live music events has undergone a profound shift over the past few decades, from a time when people queued around the corner, waiting in line for hours to try to get tickets for bands and artists they wanted to see, to now joining a virtual queue. Digital waiting rooms that put customers in virtual lines before sales even start are designed to help online selling platforms cope with extremely high traffic and allocate purchase windows to prevent websites from crashing during peak demand. Digital ticketing also enables mobile ticket storage and smoother event entry.
Some people hate the online ticket sales because customers can queue for hours in the waiting room only to find that all of the tickets are gone by the time they get to the front of the queue, or even to find that the tickets are more expensive now, because of the dynamic pricing.
Competitions and entertainment
Increasingly, game shows allow audience participation through online games and quizzes, even on the show’s own apps. An example of this is Love Island, where users can vote for different contestants and take part in quizzes about the participants’ performance on the show. In the past, quiz and game shows that required audience participation had you vote by posting answers or votes to a PO Box, or by using premium-rate telephone numbers so audiences could interact. It is far cheaper now to get involved with television shows because often the voting is free, rather than having to pay for stamps or a phone call to the network.
Another form of entertainment that is available online now is the lottery; it is now possible to buy tickets for different draws, depending on the lottery. People who wanted to buy a ticket used to have to go to a physical ticket vendor, but now they can purchase a draw entry online or, in some cases, on an app.
Conclusion
The world has changed so much since the internet was invented, and some of these changes wouldn’t even be possible without mobile devices, let alone the internet. Some of the changes are for good, and some have more drawbacks; either way, they have all gained a lot of popularity.
