There are several emerging trends in the media industry that influence and facilitate the development of the present invention, including the following:
Content Creation: A radical democratization of the media creation process is underway, due to the distribution opportunities offered by the Internet and advances in content creation technology such as low-cost camcorders and music production systems. An aspiring entertainer can acquire a large audience without a label signing by using popular social network sites like MySpace®.
Content Licensing: The market for licensing of content such as music is becoming more robust and efficient. There are now services such as iTunes® where users can purchase single songs, subscription services such as Rhapsody® where users can have access to any song whenever desired so long as a monthly fee is paid, and Internet Radio where anybody can host a stream so long as certain playlist rules are followed and certain royalties are paid.
Collaborative Filtering: With listeners now having access to any song at any time, the challenge then becomes deciding what to listen to. People increasingly choose what to listen based on shared tastes and suggestions from friends. By 2010, it is estimated that 25% of online music store transactions will be driven directly by consumer-to-consumer taste sharing applications, such as playlist publishing and ranking tools. Thus people are relying on other people to decide what to play and what new music to explore.
Infrastructure and Hardware: Cell phone networks are being upgraded to 3G and other higher bandwidth platforms, and handsets are being augmented with the capability to receive streamed media content. Cell bandwidth is becoming cheaper and faster, and services such as Push to Talk are being more popular. Push to talk is now able to allow calls to 90 people simultaneously.