Online Delivery of Digital Products, Entertainment, and Media
Certain goods, such as software, music, or news stories, can be distributed in physical format (such as hard copy, CD-ROM, DVD, and newsprint), or they can be digitized and delivered over the Internet. Online delivery is much cheaper and saves sellers storage room, handling, and distribution costs.
Online Entertainment
Online entertainment is growing rapidly and is now the most popular medium in the United States among young people between the ages of 8 and 17. There are many kinds of Internet entertainment. It is difficult to categorize them precisely because there is a mixture of entertainment types, delivery modes, and personal taste. All these must be considered when deciding whether something is entertainment or not, and what kind of entertainment it is. Some online entertainment
is interactive, in that the user is engaged in it. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2013) predicts that the global entertainment and media industry spending will reach $2.2 trillion in 2017. This includes online gaming, streaming videos, and audio (streaming media refers to multimedia that is constantly presented to users in real time).
All forms of traditional entertainment are now available over the Internet. However, some have become much more popular in the new environment due to the capabilities of technology. For example, Facebookâs online games attract millions of players. For information on entertainment in the Web 2.0 environment and social networks, see Chapter 8.
iTunes
iTunes (apple.com/itunes) is a media management software by Apple that includes an online store for buying music and other media. The program also enables you to organize and play the digital items you downloaded. For its features, see apple.com/itunes/features. Note that iTunes and similar services have basically crushed the music industry (see money.cnn.com/2013/04/25/ technology/itunes-music-decline), similar to the way netflix.com has impacted the sale of DVDs and CDs. A
Online Ticketing
This popular service enables customers to buy tickets for events (e.g., sports, music, theater) by using a computer or mobile device. Companies such as Ticketmaster, Inc. are active in this area. Fandango is a company that sells movie theater tickets.
