Once again, MySpace displays its dominance over other sites and its ability to incorporate all currently succesful internet features on one network. comScore Media Matrix found that 37.4 million unique viewers watched a total of 1.4 billion videos in July. Yahoo managed 812 million streams, whereas YouTube, whose preeminience amongst video streaming networks has seemed most obvious in the press, managed just under half of MySpace’s total with 649 million video streams. The results include only original video on the site itself and the same video embedded within blogs.
“So dominant is MySpace that it accounts for 20% of the 7.2 billion video streams across the Web. Not bad, considering that MySpace launched its video service not even six months ago. And, not bad considering that video is the new frontier, accounting for roughly 2% of online advertising.”
To me these are incredible statistics and most importantly they seem to contain a glimpse of the future of cinema (let’s not call it a “death”). If there are millions of people staying inside to be entertained with free videos, that means fewer people will feel the need to go to the cinema to get their visual kicks. Let’s just take another look at these new consumer habits:
“Another interesting stat to note is that 3 out of 5 Internet users are watching online videos, typically twice a day. On MySpace, its audience on average watches 39 videos a month, or just over 1 times a day.”
60% of Internet users (which must be only just under 50% of people in general) are watching videos online now, even if it’s just 2 30-second clips a day. The average viewing habits are only likely to increase as more material becomes available and more people are encouraged and learn how to create and upload their own efforts. At the moment, according to Screen Digest, box office figures appear to have actually increased since sumemr 2005 (universally acknowledged as a dire year for film) but as more people become aware of content on the web and appreciate that it’s free this can surely only impact sales in the film industry.
What are the arguments for cinema remaining? There’s the sense of community (always trumpeted by cineastes), the sense of being “the first” to view something (which studios cling to ever more fiercely, even as piracy has forced the window between cinema and DVD release to close and consumer desire for the “in-home experience” becomes more and more obvious), the improved sound and picture quality as well as the size of the screens (can anyone say HD-DVD or Blu-Ray? HD Wide-screen TV? Stereo link-up?) and, let’s not forget, popcorn…I’m the first to admit to my love of cinema but if the opportunity finally came around to create my own cinema at home and receive the newest releases via the internet (could YouTube or a lookalike become a distribution network for studios many years down the line?) and invite only friends (who needs the rowdy teens in the back?); if all this became possible, would I still trek to my local cinema? The force of habit in me says, “No Way!” but my instinct says “probably”.
What I’m talking about is not the death of cinema but the relocation to the home lounge. I’m not suggesting that all films will be made by random people in their bedroom and studio films will die, but some of them will be and some of these amateur artists will be good enough to hold a place with other such works like “Clerks”, “Man bites Dog”, or any number of indie films made for a pittance. These kind of speculations have become commonplace, even amongst the film industry itself, but with these new statistics of internet use, the consumer desire for such a result becomes more and more relevant for studios to consider. There’s money to be saved and opportunities to be created which makes it an exciting time for any industry. Just like the marketing communities and big media are having to adapt to the online and mobile worlds and early movers, such as Newscorp with their MySpace acquisition, are making impressive headway, big studios will finally need to face the modern music and dance to it.
Source: WWF
