Where Will You Get Your Entertainment In Five Years? Nokia Says From Your PeersWhere Will You Get Your Entertainment In Five Years? Nokia Says From Your Peers

Nokia conducted a large study and is predicting that by 2012, 25% of all entertainment will not come from the major movie and music studios, but will have been created within one's peer group. Is the end of traditional media finally in sight?I consider myself to be a hybrid media consumer. Yes, I download music and movies digitally via the Internet, but I also still go to local media outlets and purchase CDs and DVDs. In fact, most new music I buy is in CD form. Why? Because I am a snob and want the best quality, and MP3s and other compressed formats often don't cut it. This is a dying distribution model, however, and Nokia is predicting big changes ahead.

Not just in how we get our entertainment, but who actually creates it.

Nokia's recent study, entitled "A Glimpse of the Next Episode," carried out by The Future Laboratory, interviewed trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles signposting emerging entertainment trends. Combining views from industry leading figures with Nokia's own research from its 900 million consumers around the world, Nokia has constructed a global picture of what it believes entertainment will look like over the next five years.

"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'Circular'. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups -- a form of collaborative social media," said Mark Selby, Nokia's VP of multimedia, in a prepared statement.

This is happening already. For the MySpace generation, it is how new bands are getting their music out there and growing their fan base. I am a performer in my local New Jersey open-mike circuit. Many of the other musicians I meet are recording their music at home and posting it to the Internet to share with their family and friends. (Same goes with budding Spielbergs via YouTube.) I have to say, I enjoy being able to support my local businesses, and that stretches to musicians and other creative people. In fact, a growing portion of my music library is content is created by local performers.

Some factoids from Nokia's research tell us:

Those numbers are telling.

The gentleman who headed the research, Tom Savigar, trends director at The Future Laboratory, puts it aptly. "Consumers are increasingly demanding their entertainment be truly immersive, engaging, and collaborative. Whereas once the act of watching, reading, and hearing entertainment was passive, consumers now and in the future will be active and unrestrained by the ubiquitous nature of circular entertainment. Key to this evolution is consumers' basic human desire to compare and contrast, create and communicate. We believe the next episode promises to deliver the democracy politics can only dream of."

This type of behavior will only hasten the demise of record labels, studios, and companies who've held sway over the creation and distribution of music for decades. With the advance of technology, the power has been put into the hands of the people. And they are exercising it.