The MAM market has traditionally served large professional media producers such as broadcasters, news agencies, advertising agencies and industrial companies. MAM systems are known for being expensive and thus a strategic investment for many companies. All this is about to change.
Let’s take a quick look backwards and look at the factors that have contributed to the huge change we see ahead of us on the market. As a first step, the evolution of visual digital content started in the 1980s when the first digital video and picture codecs appeared to the market to store visual content on a computer. In year 1993 the Internet was founded. The next element changing the market was the rise of messenger services and social media platforms. As these platforms became the main channel for social interaction, the use of pictures and video quickly became mainstream since they were much more impactful than only text.
We now see three trends arising that have a significant impact on the MAM market, switching the focus from the traditional B2B market to a new type of a B2C market.
#1 THE RISE OF PROSUMERS
With prosumers we talk about for example bloggers, vloggers/youtubers and other prominent social media figures or hobby filmers who produce a considerable amount of media assets in the form of pictures and video. With the rise of prosumers and the platforms they use, not only the quantity of pictures and videos has been growing, also the quality and the ambition to create media assets that are striking and personalized has reached a new level. With this, a series of photo/video editing software such as DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Photoshop, Gimp, Adobe Premiere and many more has become standard for prosumers. To produce high/professional level media assets, the prosumers increasingly use not only professional software but also professional hardware to produce, edit and store their material. This used to be the territory of professional photographers, content creators and film makers.
#2 PRIVACY CONCERNS
Media content are valuable assets that have monetary value. Increased amount of advanced hacking of cloud services or social media platforms have made its users painfully aware of the risks of storing media content online and the challenges related to restricting access to unwanted parties. As another factor, challenges related to privacy in use of popular social media platforms and their use of data has contributed to the growth and awareness of privacy concerns, not only for professionals who have for long had a more thorough understanding of the digital world and privacy control issues. The usage of cloud and external platforms or services does not offer the same level of data privacy and safety as on-premise local solutions.
#3 SIZE & TYPE OF MEDIA
As low resolution has switched to high resolution in picture and video (video SD over HD to 4k/8k) and colour depth has changed from 8 bit to 10-12 bit, a substantial size increase of media files has taken place. This development has demanded newer codecs to handle and support the technical features. All this in turn has led to higher network traffic and massively higher storage usage, increased needs for calculation power and an increased content creation workflow complexity incl. delivery complexity.
To handle all new formats, a more complex metadata structure has developed. Metadata is not only keywords associated with the media, it is also a technical part of the content files including date and time when the asset was produced, resolution, model of device that created the asset, ISO value, picture histogram, GPS data, light, shutter and sensor values of the camera are stored in the media file. In the video area it is even more complex, various file formats contain thousands of metadata. This development in metadata can already be seen in all devices producing media assets (smartphones, computers, tablets, cameras) in that they have more computing power and bigger as well as faster storage. There will be more progress in this area as most platforms are taking the next step in the evolution by switching from full HD to 4k or 8k content.
The demand for solutions in the MAM market to serve the new B2C/prosumer segment has evolved more quickly than the offering in the market. Flow Works will soon launch a complete solution to the market to serve the rising demand in the B2C/prosumer segment that serves their needs for features, flexibility, price and privacy. More to follow in the next blog post about why every prosumer should have a professional MAM solution.
