Physical to Digital

The media & entertainment industry has always witnessed various format changes in terms of delivery of content.

Be it from cassettes to Audio CDs to digital music downloads, from VHS to VCDs to DVDs to Blue Rays, from hard copy news papers to e-news, from paper backs to e-books, from physical prints to digital prints, from analog connections to set top boxes. The ever evolving content delivery platforms have presented an opportunity and at the same time have done some harm. Music piracy in MP3 format killed the physical format of cassettes and audio CDs. The home video and computer gaming industry has always struggled due to piracy. Hope fully the Blue-ray format will help revive the fortunes. The books publishing industry has also been plagued by piracy both in both physical and digital format, though off late the e-books segment is getting organized and thus driving revenues for the publishing industry. The cable & satellite television industry has for long seen under reporting of subscriber numbers. Digitization will address that. Movie distribution has widely benefited from digitization, which makes it possible to release a movie widely in 4000+ screens nationally.

Also, the transition from physical to digital has eliminated some intermediaries in the value chain. Gone are music retailers. HMV shut its last store a year back. Digitization and DTH platform will eliminate local cable operators. E-news could eventually eliminate news paper distributors and vendors.  

Going forward customization will be the key. Serve what the consumer wants and not what you dish out. Be it downloading a single rather than buying an entire album. Be it reading only sports news on the internet rather than buying a full news paper. Subscribing only to those channels that you want to watch rather than paying for all sundry channels to the local cable operator.

But is it the complete end of physical era? I believe no. In countries like India there are still many pockets and segments for whom digitization is alien. Be it rural India or people in urban areas  who are averse to technology and thus depend on the physical format. Or purely because its sometimes much easier to just pick up a hard copy rather than depending upon gadgets and bandwidth speeds!!

Signing off at this.

Vishal Desai

Faculty

www.dgmcms.org.in

Vishal Desai is a permanent faculty member at DGMCMS. He is an alumnus of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. He has experience of 12 years in marketing, sales, product management and key accounts management at key positions in leading entertainment companies like Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd. (Reliance Entertainment), Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone Interactive Group. He has managed mega entertainment brands like Slumdog Millionaire, Dhamaal, Chandni Chowk To China, Bal Ganesh, Spiderman, Batman and many more.