You’d be hard-pressed to find a sector of the economy that hasn’t been disrupted somehow by the rise of the Internet and related technologies.
Blockchain technology… streaming media… ultra-miniaturization… online shopping… “Big Data”… have all changed the way we live, of course, but they’ve radically altered the business landscape as well.
Now, we’ve heard a lot about the companies losing out in this new paradigm. The “Retail Ice Age,” for instance, which has bankrupted traditional retailers and shuttered iconic stores, is front-page news right now.
What’s not headline material, however, is that the massive opportunities this shift is creating promise to be far, far more lucrative than retail or movie theaters ever were.
One industry, in particular, has exploded – I’ll show you in a minute. It’s a classic ground-floor opportunity, still in its very early days, but I don’t expect it will take long for these gains to make news.
These Numbers Are Incredible
It’s clear that companies like Amazon (AMZN ) and Netflix (NFLX) have already accomplished the “disruption.” That’s over, for the time being.
The name of the game now is growth. And it’s ramping up fast.
Streaming video subscription revenue in the United States is forecast to rise over 100% between 2013 and 2020, according to website Statista. It’s expected that, by the end of this year, video will represent 74% of all online traffic, with 55% of people reporting that they watch online videos daily.
This past July, Netflix announced its service had topped 100 million subscribers in 191 countries (would-be viewers in North Korea, Syria, the disputed Crimean Peninsula, and China are out luck… for now). They stream more than 125 million hours of content daily. In 2016, revenue reached $8.3 billion from streaming.
“Radio,” (though I’m willing to bet you probably don’t use an AM/FM unit outside of your car anymore) which nowadays is simple shorthand for streaming audio, is exploding, too.
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