Parks Associates’ Consumers and Cloud Media analyzes and quantifies the market impact of cloud-based digital media services and platforms. The consumer survey tests hypothetical products and services and measures awareness and demand for current and future solutions.

Opportunities and Challenges

Cloud-based digital media solutions have the potential to accelerate radical changes in content distribution and increase the value of digital media by allowing multiplatform access and ensuring against theft, loss, and damage. Key players including Google, Apple, and Amazon are already bringing their own cloud services to market. The UltraViolet initiative will moreover enable a wide variety of platforms to access cloud media and aims to broaden industry acceptance and consumer adoption.

Such dramatic changes create opportunities and threats, and every company in the space must decide how early and strongly it will commit itself to cloud-based media. Hardware providers can use the cloud to differentiate products but must choose which services to support. Retailers must find the right balance between the opportunity of growing digital distribution and the challenge of declining packaged media sales. Content producers might likewise find it necessary to establish partnerships with a myriad of new players such as Google and Facebook. In all cases, the imminent and radical market changes will dramatically alter the fortunes of new and established players for better and worse.