Impacts of technology on creative industries

Creative industries refer to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. Creative industries comprises of various things like music, radio, television, films, publishing, art, architecture etc. Creative industries are seen to have become increasingly important for the economic wellbeing, proponents suggesting that human creativity is the ultimate economic resource. The industries of the 21st century will depend on the generation of knowledge through creativity and innovation.

Creative industries are those companies or organizations which produce or use knowledge and also included are those which use advanced scientific knowledge, they are the cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and Services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs. For example media, arts and design organizations and universities. The term creative industries also overlap with cultural industries and media industries. These include advertising, television, radio newspapers, internet publishing, magazines, book publishing, film and theatres.

Certain common features of creative industries are; They all involve the management of creativity; the production of material is dependent on individuals like writers, scriptwriters, journalist etc; the individuals are not directly employed; most of the things are outsourced and the unpredictability of sales.

The quality of a product of creative industries has two implications:

first, the consumption of a media product by one person does not mean that another person cannot consume the same product. These products are public good. Second, most creative goods especially media goods cost very little to produce and distribute to increasing numbers of consumers the internet further lowers the cost of distribution and digital technologies lowers the cost of production.

Impacts of technology on creative industries;

Technology can bring about changes in creative industries. The change is in the form of “digital convergence”, which can be of three types: technological convergence (a shift in patterns of ownership of media, such as film, television, music and games), media convergence (allowing users to consume different media at the same time using a single personal computer) and access convergence (all production and distribution Of media and services are being reengineered to work on

a distributed network platform; i.e., everything is becoming available or doable on the Internet).

Digitization creates a number of new possibilities for distribution. With digital formats, reproduction is free of degradation and incurs no extra cost per item. This opens up the possibilities for infinite expansion of markets and reduces or eliminates the need to warehouse or store products. In a digital age, however, it is potentially possible for producers

and consumers to be in direct contact, thereby bypassing the control of the gatekeepers of the distribution system, which are economically powerful .

Therefore, ICTs may play a major role in this transformation process, reducing costs, improving productivity in the value chain and making companies more visible in the global market. The impact of ICT is visible in those creative industries depending on technology at their very core (software, games, multimedia content)
   By Segesela Blandina
     BAPRM 42663