More and more, live streaming is breaking into areas of our everyday lives. Unlike many other forms of technology and online connections, going live got big at the turn of the decade and has only continued to pick up steam since. As it turns out, tuning into live streams and hosting live streams offer an engaging form of entertainment and connection with others that people continue to seek out even when not stuck indoors.
For the most part, mainstream use of live streaming technology hasn’t changed a lot in recent years. It’s still a mostly passive experience, despite being very engaging. So, when looking at reports for the global market and seeing a 23.0 percent compound annual growth rate through to 2030, you’d expect there to be a few more advancements in the field. Already, some strong pivots are making it to the mainstream in different ways.
Beginning to Apply Live Tech in Different Ways
For the majority of viewers, live streaming either means watching someone host a live stream discussion or showing their gaming session live, or doing the hosting themselves. It’s a simple premise, but tuning into a live broadcast gives the sense that anything can happen and adds a shine of authenticity that pre-made videos lose a little bit of through the creation process. This is why the UK is home to 13.4 million users of the dedicated streaming platform Twitch, while the United States comes in as the first country with the most Twitch users, at a whopping 6.5 million.
It’s hugely popular, and it’s easy to see why. For decades, TV has made a huge deal about showing events and even specials of TV shows live. Live sports broadcasts obviously bank on people needing to see the action unfold in real time. However, as live tech has picked up online, more developers have worked ways to evolve it into an even more immersive experience. Two key areas are making live streams interactive.
In the entertainment space, there are now daily and special event rooms for live bingo. In shows like Whack a Mole or Moneycomb Bingo, thanks to some extra bits of tech in the studios, viewers can play on their own digital tickets as the real game of bingo is being played onscreen. If they win, the rewards are paid into their balance almost instantly, upping the immersion. The other area is live shopping. Similarly, viewers can buy the items shown in real time, snapping up deals as they go.
New Tech Trends to Shape Live Streaming in the Future
Naturally, when we’re talking about tech in play, AI is the first place we turn. For live streams, it seems inevitable that we’ll be getting an influx of chat moderators and community managers, working away to keep things within the brackets chosen by the host. From there, an AI could be programmed to try to increase viewer engagement when it senses a lull by putting up quizzes, asking for feedback, or funnelling through relevant stats and facts.
Outside of the stream itself, it looks like live streams are getting more creative with the use of hardware. Much like live bingo and, to a lesser degree, live shopping use extra hardware to enhance the experience, everyday live streamers can do the same. Multi-camera live streams using top-tier mobiles look to be on the rise, and much better cameras that will stream in Ultra-HD are becoming much more accessible.
Live streaming only looks to become more popular as studios explore ways of making it more immersive and of a higher quality overall. For many, adaptable AI solutions might already offer a noticeable jump forward.
