Online Entertainment Trends to Follow for 2021

After the post-Covid, the online entertainment industry has spiked up so high that it has become one of the major paths for creators and viewers to invest their time in. So either you want to earn from these entertainment trends, or have fun with these trends, here are the best 5 online entertainment trends to follow for 2021.

1. Video Streaming
2. Social Videos
3. Esports / Online Gaming
4. Cloud Gaming
5. Podcasts

1.  Video Streaming

Maybe the best thing to do when you’re bored is to watch some movies or tv series. One of the popular video streaming platforms Amazon Prime has over 200 million Prime members, which generates over $25.21 billion annually. While the other streaming platforms like Netflix, and Hulu are also having a tough competition to steal the viewers. While the Video Streaming (SvoD) revenue is expected to cross over $85 billion per year by 2025, so a lot of competition will be on who gets the most of it among these big three companies.

2.  Social Videos

The trend of Social videos massively increased with the popularity of Tiktok. As of now, Tiktok has over 1.1 Billion monthly active users.  Similarly, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube nowadays depend highly on video marketing campaigns. Users spend more time in the video, and they ultimately spend more time on the app. Because of this, these platforms also allow monetization value for the creators.

So if you are a creator or just a random guy who spends 3 hours scrolling through the Social media apps, Social Videos are the best trend to follow. While Tiktok is a completely video-based platform, Facebook has also launched Facebook Watch, which includes only videos, similarly, Instagram has launched IGTV for long videos. After the huge success in IGTV, Instagram recently launched “reels” available in a few countries. Reels are short videos that can be uploaded on stories, and they stay in the Instagram feed as well. These reels are becoming increasingly common as the use of reels increases a creator’s number of reaches.

3.  Esports / Online Gaming

Esports or online gaming is one of the booming industries that is paving its way to being in the top ranks of the online entertainment community.  Esports is a form of online gaming, where different players compete with each other on a global scale in a competitive environment. Esports is played completely on the computer, whereas some of the games are also available to play on smartphones.

To name a few of Esports that are leading the industry are League of Legends, Fortnite, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, and many more. The gaming industry draws its attraction from a tournament where the players compete in League of Legends that drew over a million viewers at a time. In such tournaments where there are high numbers of viewers, the prize racks up to million dollars.

Pro gamers can also use services like Twitch, which is one of the most popular game streaming platforms, to broadcast their live gaming.

However, to earn from Esports, one has to do a lot of training and hard work to reach the top. But the rewards on the top are worthy. As of 2021, a lot of people are developing their skills and joining the esports platform to kill time.

4.  Cloud Gaming

Cloud Gaming is something new to the gaming industry. While it may not have huge millions of users, the gamers are loyal to the platform.  Cloud gamers use remote servers located in the data centers to play the game. You don’t need to install the games, different packages that come with it. Just login to your Gaming console and join a server to play.

Xbox Game Pass, GeForce Now, and Google Stadia are three big cloud gaming providers that offer their services on smartphones as well. PlayStation Now (PS Now) subscription also allows members to play games on all versions of PlayStation and PC.

This feature of playing and socializing by staying at home can give a boost to the future of gamings like AR Gaming, which has already progressed in the present.

5.  Podcasts

When FastCompany published an article on April 25, 2018, there were over 525,000 active shows and over 18.5 million episodes. Today there are over 48 million episodes at the time of writing this.

While the growth of people listening to podcasts and the people who create podcasts have heavily increased, it’s expected that in 2021, there will be around 120 million people in the U.S who will listen to podcasts at least once a month.

Just like Web-Series, there are podcasts series that are being developed rapidly. Podcasts streaming services like Wondery,  Spotify have some amazing podcasts that you can listen to.

These were a few online entertainment trends post covid to follow for 2021. We can say that a lot of things have changed as a result of what is going on in the world. People are more likely to consume entertainment services for which they don’t have to go outdoors.  Either you are a creator, or an enjoyer, these trends will definitely help you to cross the year.