The quiet shift toward personalised digital entertainment

Entertainment is no longer a broadcast activity. Newsfeeds, video streaming services, and game environments are now all highly individualized experiences. A few years of gradual evolution may have yielded an entirely different set of new behaviors and expectations around the way audiences spend their leisure time, and how they interact with digital products and services.

Personalisation in practice

One area where this trend is particularly visible is in digital leisure platforms. Services such as online casino environments reflect how entertainment is becoming more adaptable, offering users the flexibility to engage on their own terms. Whether through varied formats, intuitive navigation, or on-demand access, these platforms demonstrate how personalisation is being integrated into everyday experiences. All credit to the algorithms as they have become the real discoverers these days. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 has shed light on the fact that algorithmic news discovery is becoming the primary way through which audiences discover content online, and that users under 24 years of age are much more likely to have encountered specific news sources via recommendation rather than by searching or linking directly. And the news is not an isolated case.

Music, streaming, and the recommendation economy

In a recent report, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) presents information on trends in music streaming and how the use of algorithms in streaming platforms has fundamentally changed the way that audiences consume recorded music. Playlists based on listeners' listening history have in many cases become the new radio – making algorithmic listening habits the soundtrack to everyday life. Using an algorithm to create a playlist to "surf through" music based on past listening habits is personalising the way audiences consume entertainment, not in the individual songs or videos watched, but at the structural level of the music catalogue, which is then presented and ranked differently for each user. The way people consume information has changed with the dawn of personalisation in digital media. A survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study and Abundance of Journalism found that the way people engage with platforms has shifted over the years. Audiences used to casually browse through a website or a feed. Today, with the vast amount of content available, digital platforms may have become more like intelligent personalities that anticipate user preferences. In some cases, they can predict user desires even before search terms are entered.

Regulation and the limits of personalisation

This amount of personal data is not without controversy, and in recent months the UK has introduced a new wave of digital economy legislation that will compel companies to be more open about the ways in which they use this information to ‘personalise’ online content. The regulatory framework for online content is a fast-evolving and contested terrain, with politicians juggling the need to encourage innovation with the need to protect users and to ensure their consent.

A recalibrated relationship between platform and audience

Where is society heading? The argument here is that the trajectory is toward more dynamic, more adaptive environments that actually change and evolve depending on what is happening at any given moment in time. The question is then whether these environments lead to better or more limited experiences. The key will be to what degree the systems that underpin them are in fact clear and understandable to users and what degree of choice or agency is provided.