Live streaming has emerged as a popular competitor to content streaming and traditional broadcasting. For many brands and content providers, Live Streaming Platforms represent an exciting opportunity to directly connect with their target audiences to drive new revenue streams. While platforms like Facebook live, YouTube gaming, Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat, Mixer have predominately features live content, they are expanding to other content types as well.

Why are live streaming platforms are so popular?

The reason for live streaming platforms becoming popular is a picture of an industry in transition. Form passive broadcast experience delivery to TV networks to personalize and interactive streaming experience that can be consumed across multiple devices, anywhere and anytime. You can see the proof point of success gathered across several successfully executed live streaming events. However, it requires meticulous planning, which is required to execute such events at any scale.

Live streaming platforms offer interactive content to their viewers. By interactive- it means any type of content that can influence the audience. Moreover, social platforms launch new extension tools to improve audience engagement. Common examples of this- A poll, viewer Leaderboard or option to request songs played during a live stream.

What Does the Future of Interactive Entertainment Look Like?

Entertainment will get close and personal

Interactive entertainment of the future would likely do away with endless scrolling for what we want. And it all starts with a smartphone.

The gap between entertainment and reality will fade

In the near future, entertainment will get more real and less like something to sit and consume via a TV network. Viewers will walk into the action and produce content simultaneously. Live streaming already makes it possible to explore an event frombehind the scenes while the event is going on.

Live streaming combined with technologies like virtual reality will present viewers with a more comfortable, immersive, and richly interactive viewing experience. Viewership on live streaming platforms will keep increasing. Brands are experimenting on how to set up streaming video combined with technology. More and more people are signing up for livestreaming content and spending more time watching gaming. Over the past years, the average number of viewers on Twitchand Netflix has risen 450% with the number of hours watchedper month also reaching its highest point. High quality live streaming entertainment content will drive users to interactive streaming platforms.

Artificial intelligence in live streaming

Artificial intelligence is the current digital revolution that streamlines user experience. It basically learns what yields a positive result and continually refines itself based on gathered data. Machines learn from cues like speech recognition, face, lighting, etc. to automate recording or live switching. For example, smart live video will be automatically able to begin the stream when it recognizes a particular face or voice. The technology can be further leveraged to track the presented on thestage and keep the focus on them. Once the stream is finished, the technology can automatically generate and upload highlights of the video based on cues again. The potential of machinelearning and artificial intelligence is huge and it can be adapted across many fields.

The business trends of the entertainment industry

The entertainment industry has adequate business incentives to take the video content in transforming the digital space.

Game streaming as a serviceLaunching of games and its retail distribution is becoming an old thing. Burning game software to its error-free version on a disc for distribution is not practically possible. In addition, business models are alignedacross screens. Brands are using games as a major service, and it’s free to start as well. Brands that have realize the amount of time spent on the franchise doesn’t have to be in the game itself. Since the increased use of smartphones and tablets, brands are using these gaming devices to deliver cross screen entertainment tapping into new game concepts and business opportunities.

How have the quality and reliability of live streaming changed over the past years?

Migration to adaptive bit rate technologies like HTTP livestreaming has helped to deliver highquality content to more devices. It also allows smart players to adopt these high bit rates as high bandwidth has become available in more homes. While the quality of the video content has gone better, the reliability of its delivery is still a matter of concern. The best practices indelivering high quality live streaming experience to your audience include.

Having a backup plan– You must have a clear backup plan and a backup plan again for your backup plan-especially for high-profile events of your brand. Make sure that you have a responseteam to deliver a quick and accurate response to an issue.

Balancing quality with cost and performance Ensure that you balance quality with your budget and performance. Consumers finally will consume your data and you would be left with the bill with no accolades about the quality of experiences you provide.

Conclusion

Live streaming platforms offer something quite unique which other content streaming platforms do not provide– The ability for content creators to monetize their content. While the barriers to getting content to streaming platforms like Netflix are high. But, in the long run, it will provide the audience with more relevant content and abundance of choice. In such a scenario, viewership is likely to follow. With an increased amount of live video traffic, the audience will have a tough time keeping track of events. This issue may be solved in the future with live content aggregation services which will categorize streams and help the audience decide what to watch and set reminders for upcoming live streams.

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