1. Introduction
Consequently, we aimed to address this gap by examining trends in official data presented by popular live stream service in regards to active creators, as well as their viewership. This study presents a brief trend analysis of a Singapore population, which appears to support a broader global-view trend of increased activity in live streaming Singapore services. In addition, we are able to identify some behaviors of the active creators on live streaming platforms. This study can serve as a baseline study which contributes to the ongoing dynamic research in live streaming media as it changes with the advent of new technologies in an always-connected world.
The consuming of media has changed with the advent of digital technology; we have moved away from individually seek-and-go models of media consumption towards portable, social, and interactive modes. Live streaming, enabled through the proliferation of consumer-grade digital cameras and improved network infrastructure, has gained popularity as an emergent form of widely shared and community-driven production. It allows individuals to engage in shared experiences at a fraction of the cost of traditional media, while providing a platform for real-time feedback, which further blurs the lines between creator and consumer. Despite the proliferation of research on live streaming systems in the literature, just who are these active creators and viewers, outside of China and the United States, remains a gap in this highly dynamic research area.
1.1. Background of Live Streaming Services
This paper examines a major micro-level change in the category of entertainment uses. From an industry perspective, we are interested in the special characteristics evident in current live-streaming services, beyond the ability to make real-time connections. Although it is common for researchers to study live-stream services in the context of single platforms, and it has been increasingly recognized that relative platform characteristics have implications for product and pricing strategies and for quality and variety, the shift in platform-market competition within the live-streaming category as a whole – which we recognize as a movement from general-purpose services like YouTube to alternative services that feature specific themes – is a topic largely unexamined by researchers.
The main distinguishing feature of live streaming services is the possibility of real-time interactions between broadcasters and audiences, and among the audiences themselves. With the global popularity and scale of such services reaching unprecedented levels in recent years, it is important to investigate both the nature and the implications of these platforms, for uses ranging from entertainment to real-time news and gaming.
2. Current Landscape of Live Streaming in Singapore
Live streaming services in Singapore are quite popular, with three out of four residents watching live broadcasts. This was the first time that a higher proportion of Singapore residents used live streaming services than in the Asia-Pacific region. The high popularity of live broadcasting in Singapore, the increase in the demand for shopping and food-related live markers, is mainly due to their use of brand productivity-making and live spending, i.e., how much money they spend. Their study covers the purchase of subscription goods such as Crusader Crack and other snacks, shows, and free thoughts to pay for live delivery fees. The major goal is to understand the composition and orientation of the live stream, enabling content creators and Bristol businesses to match the interests of users.
9 Meaningful Findings: It is a separate and essential part of a comprehensive explanation of live streaming in Singapore. Three-quarters of Singapore consumers use live streaming. Entertainment is the primary driver of live streaming, including food and the environment. For the first time, more people in Singapore have used live streaming than in the whole of Southeast Asia. Services cater to these live streaming preferences. Raijin and Hisense conducted data analysis. In a national survey of 2,000 people who plan to spend in Singapore, they analyzed interests and consumer trends. They examined procurement and access costs, as well as the pros and cons of streaming selected films at local film festivals. Their predictions confirmed that King Dada, Blessing, and Wang Banner Poster Ziza will be the most popular parental lodges. Their prediction is “An Unexpected Journey to Annex T,” which was praised by Dada Man at the B World Exhibition. He promises Singapore’s super favor.
2.1. Popular Platforms and Content
Having discussed various reasons for engagement in live streaming activities, it is important to focus our attention on the most popular platforms and content that are provided by live streamers in Singapore. YouTube Live, Facebook Live, and the popular local-based platform BIGO Live were among the most frequently named platforms mentioned during the interviews. Apart from the more popular social platforms, several respondents pointed out that many streamers are unwilling to pay a certain percentage of their income to these international platforms and instead opt for a local hosting company. Upon scanning the popular local hosting companies, respondents named Dkran, UnetGame, BBTV Ch7, Nimo TV, and Uplive as some of the platforms that are widely used by the majority of the gaming or let’s play live streaming hobbyists and professional gamers.
3. Trends in Live Streaming Services
3.2 Diverse tools to attract new streamers. Important among other industry players are streamers, who continue to contribute content and have been seen as the building blocks of the ecosystem. With the increasing business models available, aspirants can participate in the market of their dreams. Live streaming platforms have been introducing and improving the human-computer interactive interfaces, such as bullet chat and virtual gifts, which assist streamers in closer, more intimate, and interactive contact to win the hearts of their audience. Language translation technology has also been utilized in the occupations of streamers to help streamers get in touch with audiences overseas, allowing them to speak in their native language. Additionally, technology upgrading automatically changes streamers’ features, adjusting and fitting streamers to pre-agreed and researched audience interests. All these technological advancements in artificial intelligence potentially solve the constraints of human interaction, allowing streamers to more easily and spontaneously interact with viewers wherever they are.
3.1 Strategic partnerships are key. Strategic partnerships between live streaming service providers and various industry players, such as film, television, and radio broadcasters, enhance the diversity of the content that is available to consumers. Aggregating different players’ resources has allowed live streaming service providers to implement more business models, thereby winning the hearts of wider groups of consumers as well. Such strategic partnerships require resources ranging from film professionals to technology. Service providers such as HUYA, Douyu, and PandaTV are backed largely by entertainment companies such as Tencent Game and KwaiChow Brothers.
3.1. Emergence of Virtual Events
E-rudition is not alone. Event companies around the world offer to replace existing “offline” events – select “virtual” to protect the environment from resource wastage, extend marketing efforts for greater reach, advocate social distancing, as well as tamp down the risks from meeting with many. These company offers have grown to integrate other attributes such as saving on sales and marketing effort for the target audience due to monitoring or observing behaviors real-time. Nonetheless, our observations are in line with the unfortunate revelation during a conference of leading event management teams to decide on a new global collaboration initiative to handle the wave of inquiries – “when this ends, will there still be a need for virtual events?”
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has forced global industries and governments into an unprecedented level of emergency response. Singaporeans stay connected to their loved ones, for casual social interactions, and even for heavy-duty work. Virtual events are also seeing a massive surge in interest. During this period, e-rudition has witnessed an overall signing up rates have grown by 50 times, landing as high as 3000% during the period April 2020 from a popular “admission only” virtual summit in a fast growth business and digital transformation area, that focused on giving hope and viable business plans to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This sharp uptick contrasts significantly to a current 50% weekly sign-up rate growth change observed since the beginning of the year.
4. Technological Advancements in Live Streaming
Aires et al. give an overview of the system research efforts in this area: from the network edge amplification methods, to control the watermark techniques for the description of resources, and to resource guarantees through access control mechanisms. However, it is not just a matter of frame by frame or garden by garden NR synchronization in order to enable full advantages from overlapping plays. These systems require real-time support and easy extension on the underlying coding systems, in order to maximize interactivity and minimize the relevant experience of the user.
The number of active transmitters is surging, along with easy internet access for video streaming. It is indeed seen as a growing trend, not only for total pre-production markets, but also for new emerging markets and application services based on the combination of live streaming and some advanced capabilities, like automatic monitoring and recognition, tele-medicine, and tele-education. It even goes beyond commercial usage and covers public safety applications.
At the same time, delivery mechanisms also evolved from the traditional broadcasting infrastructures, like the cable DTV or terrestrial DTV systems, to the new-generation wireless networks, like the 3G-light services of the UMTS or the HSUP NET of WiMAX.
Over the past few years, these technological advancements in the area of video movement have enabled the realization of real-time video streaming through internet access. At the back end, we can see enhancements to video coding, from simple motion compensation algorithms of MPEG-ICP and MPEG-2, leading us to the age of actual time Digital Video and the State of the Art Motor.
Evolution is evidenced in the technological advancements of live streaming capabilities. With contributions from three key groups – the hardware and software manufacturers, research institutions, and network telecommunications companies – the platform of video streaming pushes faster and faster to live streaming, especially in eradicating temporal and spatial restrictions to communication.
4.1. 5G Technology Impact
There are several reasons why technology including 5G-driven contributions to economic expansion, job creation and environmental consumption offers opportunities for network operators and end-users. First, the technology here can be seen as a clear improvement in infrastructure quality from other factors for the long-term prospects for economic growth. Large scale deployment of 5G will allow a large number of new connected devices to operate on a single cell site, considerable population density to increase. This should lead to economies of scale, helping Singapore to leverage existing infrastructure to distribute both economic growth and technological opportunities. Such infrastructure quality improvements should also result in significant direct welfare gains as well as provide a strong incentive to detail policy.
The adoption of 5G technology in Singapore should develop much faster than its 4G counterpart. This is because both the market forces and strategic considerations to adopt 5G are much stronger than that for 4G. At the simplest level, 5G technology has all the features that make it infinitely faster than 3G and 4G mobile networks. It has struggled in the market, and the question remains whether smartphone consumers and enterprises need that kind of speed, where significant and financially strong content providers can pay the required price to be the first users and where meaningful network coverage can be achieved with such a frequency spectrum. All of these are necessary pre-conditions for achieving technology leadership, a permanent technological advantage. Massive broadband with some moving constraints is therefore a sufficient but not a necessary condition.
5. Predictions for the Future of Live Streaming in Singapore
Despite these changes, one prediction is the importance of live streaming not just in a change in the way people consume content but also that people will adapt the way they create and broadcast their content. With the increasing trend of commodified e-commerce live channels growing from our study, live streaming may be the new tool for direct marketing and may be used on a continuing basis by large social media platforms. With the convenience and integration of borrowed e-commerce services, Singaporeans have cultivated their consumption habits and might prefer using an existing platform such as Zalora, Lazada, Redmart, or Shopee for their needs instead of relying on the niche live-streamed shopping. This raises a potential conflict of interest between independent live-stream hosts and those backed by major companies.
The future of live streaming is not crystal clear. For the younger generation, they are the ‘first to adopt and the first to leave’ – platform loyalty is not a value that they stand by. For the older generation, their lives may take a different turn and their interest in live streaming may be short-lived or diversified to different categories of content. Furthermore, it is likely that traditional media companies will continue to fund live streaming services, further revolutionizing the field. Following the footsteps of China, there may be more cases of ‘live streaming hosts’ who gain fame, thus impacting the privacy of their daily lives.
5.1. Shift Towards Interactive and Immersive Experiences
By integrating more interaction apps in the live streaming right from the start, content creators can generate more discussions for the recorded content in the viewing sessions as the discussions and comments can be embedded with time markers and displayed on demand as the viewing session progresses. Moreover, the number of comments can serve as a proxy to gauge the level of interest and engagement with more established viewers who, in turn, act as “free” promoters to attract more potential first-time viewers. With a wider menu selection and interaction plugins, content consumers are moving up the interactivity curve when they participate or gain more value from the discussions and sessions if there are greater web hits, live visitors, comments, and page views. Consequently, better technology will dampen the market price competition with venture capitalists and other financial sponsors, who need fewer eyeballs to express interest. The platform and content creator can now charge a premium for better quality of discussions, comments, and viewing experience, even if the total number of viewership drops to a lower level.
As video production technology and social media continue to evolve and converge, online video platforms and digital marketplaces are likewise moving towards more interactive and immersive experiences. There is a clear shift towards better sound and image quality and creating more realistic visual experiences. Streaming platforms too are integrating more plugs and widgets for social and payment plugins, enabling content creators to experience better and deeper interactions and involvement with their audiences. These efforts are paying off as live sport and live gaming channels still enjoy strong growth of viewership, subscription, and engagement. However, rising trade tensions and other macroeconomic factors will continue to dampen growth as many people will stay indoors and spend less. Nevertheless, like people behave during their study days, physical interactions and immersive experiences still have their intrinsic values which OTT channels cannot fully replace or emulate. Some events, experiences, and emotions can only happen in real life and can only be felt in person, in situ, through face-to-face.