What is changing in media - from creation to discovery

It is not technology but consumers' reactions to it that has given rise to the big themes playing out in the Indian media and entertainment market

Carvaan, a Bluetooth speaker loaded with 5,000 old Hindi songs, is one of the biggest media hits of 2017. Saregama’s answer to the iPod is shaped like an old Murphy radio, has four dials, and is the easiest thing to operate. Since its launch earlier this year, it has sold 95,000 units and is a Rs 40-crore brand. By March 2018, it will cross 500,000 units and Rs 200 crore. Carvaan illustrates the power of something the media industry lost in the technology madness that hit it with the internet — serendipity. There is a body of consumers who want the passive media experience — the lean-back one, and not the lean-forward one.

 
The second thing the industry lost, after the internet disrupted it, is the ability to make consumers pay for content. That is bouncing back with a vengeance across India’s Rs 1,26,200-crore media and entertainment industry. And the third theme — random, serendipitous creativity; high levels of it and lots of it.
 
The push for pay
 

For more than 15 years now as the internet grew, it brought tremendous freedom and flexibility. Consumers can choose what portion of an album, newspaper, or film they want to hear, read, or watch. They can choose when, where, and what device they want to do it on. This has led to a race for customisation.

 
Take news for instance. If you are a liberal, your Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of news and alerts from liberal websites. The Google and the Facebook algorithm, among others, track you relentlessly honing their knowledge of your likes, dislikes, buys, browsing, viewing, and so on. You end up in a silo where you are only being exposed to, discussing, and reacting to ideas that you fundamentally approve of — a ghettoisation that has been documented in scores of research studies. This has created a space for fake news — pictures, videos or news items created to generate traffic and, therefore, ad revenues or propaganda. There are hundreds of teenagers sitting in Veles, Macedonia who cooked up headlines such as ‘Hilary Clinton is a murderer,’ and changed the course of the US Presidential election. In India, many lynchings, riots, and conflicts are a result of a fake video or WhatsApp message.

 
Consumers are now pushing back. According to the annual Digital News Report, brought out by the Oxford-based Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism, Americans paying to access online news doubled from 8 per cent in 2015 to 16 per cent in 2016. This includes ongoing subscriptions, one-off payments and donations. This trend is mirrored in the UK, and other parts of Europe. Almost 29 per cent of the American respondents said a key reason for paying was because they ‘want to help fund journalism’. That roughly is the reason Indians are donating generously to Alt News, The Wire, or subscribing to The Ken or Rocket Post, among other news brands. Alt News, Boom, and SMHoaxSlayer, among others run fact-check sites that debunk fake news.

 
Consider entertainment. At five million views in ten days, Bose Dead/Alive is proving to be a big online hit from Balaji Telefilms better known for TV shows such as Naagin. The critically acclaimed Bose is one of the 12 original shows made for its video app Alt Balaji. The ad-free, subscription-based platform claims 12 million downloads and a million viewers on the web. That is not much if you consider that a single episode of a top-rated show, say Kya Haal Mr Panchaal, gets over 12 million impressions on Star Bharat. But Bose Dead/Alive or Inside Edge on Amazon Video are the harbingers of a change that we had hoped online would bring, but never did — of bringing intellectual property (IP) and creativity back to the centre of the entertainment business.

 
The growth of online video in India is an old story. There are more than 431 million Indians online, of which, roughly 300 million are watching videos. At the same time, 875 million Indians continue to watch about three hours of TV a day. At Rs 2,000 crore currently, online video is a non-entity compared to the Rs 58,830 crore TV generates. But the two forms of video consumption feed off each other. What works on TV generally works online and a whole lot of online consumption is about catch-up TV. This is why YouTube remains the largest video player in India, followed by Star’s Hotstar. But these two large players have been subsidised by their profitable search and broadcast businesses, respectively.

 
That changed with the entry of Amazon Video and Netflix in the last couple of years. They are spending huge amounts of money on commissioning good shows across a variety of genres and languages, and charging users for it. This, in turn, is pushing other players — Alt Balaji, Voot, Viu, among the 30-odd video apps in India — to up the ante in the hope of creating the next Netflix. “As a content creator it is an amazing time, because everybody is throwing money at me,” says Tanmay Bhat, co-founder of AIB.  
 
The world is a stage

 
Even if they aren’t, it is a wonderful time to be one.
 
Technical Sharmaji is a YouTube channel by Praval Sharma, a regular North Indian chap. He helps you understand tech products, largely mobile phones, laptops, et al in Hindi. He is the second-biggest YouTube creator of 2017, with 3.9 million subscribers (viewers). The first is BB Ki Vines at 5 million subscribers. Here, Bhuvan Bam plays different characters in humorous little skits. The list of top ten YouTube creators includes an inspirational speaker, two stand-up comedians, and a cook, among others. Most started with just mobile phones.

 
So, on the one hand is the rise of pay-driven, high-quality content, and on the other hand, is this deluge of unknowns bursting out to woodwork. YouTube, Vimeo, or DailyMotion have become national audition theatres. Many of these top ten creators will soon be picked up by the big tech, telecom or media companies to fuel their online video growth just like AIB signed on with Hotstar. The building of a content ecosystem that digs deep into the talent pool of India, funnels them towards audiences, big brands and the money is almost over. From creation to discovery to popularity, this ecosystem is as serendipitous as the next song you are likely to hear on Carvaan.