This section highlights some key trends that are shaping the way media is being produced and consumed in Europe (and that haven’t already been addressed in the previous section). The sector as a whole can be thought of as encompassing publishing, broadcast, data networks, social media, user-generated content, gaming, music, film and more.
5.4.2.1
Increased levels of broadband penetration
According to Eurostat, there has been a massive increase in household access to broadband in the years since 2006 (Eurostat). Across the so-called “EU27” (EU member states and six other
countries in the European geographical area) broadband penetration was at around 30% in 2006 but stood at 72% in 2012.
There are of course differences between countries in levels of broadband access, and even within countries some regions are better provided for than others. In some of the more prosperous countries such as Denmark, 90% of the population has internet access, as compared to just over 50% in Romania. Within the UK, Greater London has broadband take-up of 83% compared to just 32% in the Scottish Outer Hebrides (Ofcom, 2012).
For households with high-speed broadband, media streaming is a very attractive way of consuming content. They no longer need to be tied to TV and radio schedules, and can readily stream movies etc. from online providers. Equally, faster upload speeds mean that people can create their own videos for social media platforms
.
5.4.2.2
Consumer behaviour and expectations
Consumers are no longer passive recipients of media. There has been a huge shift away from mass, anonymised mainstream media, towards on-demand, personalised experiences. There will always be a place for large-scale shared experiences such as major sporting events or popular reality shows and soap operas. However, consumers now expect to be able to watch or listen to whatever they want, when they want it. Services such as the BBC’s iPlayer have finally ushered in a long-promised age of “Martini media” (“anytime, anyplace, anywhere”) (BBC, 2006).
The publishing and advertising industries have customarily used demographics to target products and marketing. However, since the proliferation of channels and devices in the last 15 years, some of the traditional differentiators of age, gender and so on are no longer the only ways that audiences may be segmented. Niche groups and interests can be identified much more easily by Big Data processing capability, and their needs served accordingly. For pure- play digital publishers, long tail business models will become more attractive as the costs of storing and analysing customer data come down.
As detailed in the section above, digital on-demand services have radically changed the importance of schedules for both consumers and broadcasters. Streaming services put control in the hands of users who choose when to consume their favourite shows, web content or music. The largest media corporations have already invested heavily in the technical infrastructure to support the storage and streaming of content. Big Data will make this more accessible to smaller players, and enable them to target investment at the value-add services that would differentiate them from competitors. For example, the number of legal music download and streaming sites, and internet radio services, has increased rapidly in the last few years – consumers have an almost-bewildering choice of options depending on what music genres, subscription options, devices, DRM they like. Over 391 million tracks were sold in Europe in 2012, and 75 million tracks played on online radio stations (IFPI, 2013).
5.4.2.3
The rights landscape – anonymity, privacy, data protection
The explosion in the digital media landscape has not come without issues around consumer rights. Open data in particular heralds much promise in transparency, positive social change and new business models. However, there is a risk that governments and corporations could use the ever-increasing amounts of data being captured for more nefarious purposes. There is always a tension between collecting the appropriate amount of data to conduct business, and collecting more just because it’s possible and might come in handy later on.The online loan provider wonga.com can scour more than 6,000 pieces of publicly-available data points on an individual before deciding to lend money or not (Wired, 2011) – decisions that could have a massive impact on someone’s life. Supermarkets, pharmaceutical companies and media organisations can aggregate data from millions of people in order to improve many aspects of their operations – but in doing that they are also storing and accessing detailed information about an individual.
Social network users contribute masses of information to platforms in return for free services. As many have observed “if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product” (Lifehacker, 2010). Facebook in particular out of all the big social networks has often been criticised, blocked or sued over its approach to user privacy (Wikipedia, “Criticism of Facebook”). In a recent case, Facebook was taken to court in Germany by an internet privacy organisation (Zdnet, 2013). Differences in privacy laws between Ireland (where Facebook in Europe is based) and Germany meant that it was unclear whether German users could be forced to enter their real names and personal information.
Data protection in the EU comes under an EU-wide directive. It is due to be replaced from 2014 with more simplified administration but extra obligations for data controllers (SearchCloudSecurity, 2012). Media companies hold significant amounts of personal data, whether on customers, suppliers, content or their own employees. As they leverage the potential of cloud computing, they will face new challenges to keep data safe. Companies will have responsibility not just for themselves as data controllers, but also their cloud service providers (data processors). Many large and small media organisations have already suffered catastrophic data breaches – two of the most high-profile casualties were Sony (Reuters, 2011) and Linkedin (ComputerWeekly, 2012). They incurred not only the costs of fixing their data breaches, but also fines from data protection bodies such as the ICO in the UK (Information Week, 2013).