Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is shown and consumed in a continuous quality from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. Streaming described to the delivery method of content, rather than the content itself.

Distinguishing delivery method from the media applies specifically to telecommunications networks, as near of the traditional media delivery systems are either inherently streaming e.g. radio, television or inherently non-streaming e.g. books, videotape, audio CDs. There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or poor buffering of the content, & users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to streamcontent. With the use of buffering of the content for just a few seconds in cover of playback, the variety can be much improved.

Livestreaming is the real-time delivery of content during production, much as live television broadcasts content via television channels. Livestreaming requires a realise of reference media e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software, an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, & a content delivery network to hand sth. out and deliver the content.

Streaming is an option to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content previously watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio content previously the entire file has been transmitted. The term "streaming media" can apply to media other than video and audio, such(a) as exist closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered "streaming text".

Streaming is most prevalent in video on demand and streaming television services. Other services stream music. Video game live streaming uses streaming for online gaming.

Use by the general public

Advances in computer networking, combined with powerful home computers and operating systems shown streaming media practical and affordable for the public. Stand-alone Internet radio devices emerged to offer listeners a non-technical choice for listening to audio streams. These audio streaming services became increasingly popular; streaming music reached 118.1 billion streams in 2013.

"Streaming creates the illusion—greatly magnified by headphone use, which is another matter—that music is a return you can reshape on and off; the water metaphor is intrinsic to how it works. It dematerializes music, denies it a crucial degree of autonomy, reality, and power. It ensures musicdisposable, impermanent. Hence it intensifies the ebb and flow of pop fashion, the way musical 'memes' rise up for a week or a month and are then forgotten. And it renders our experience of individual artists/groups shallower."

—Robert Christgau, 2018

In general, multimedia content is data intensive, so media storage and transmission costs are still significant. Media is broadly compressed for transport and storage. Increasing consumer demand for streaming of high-definition HD content has led the industry to setting technologies such(a) as WirelessHD and G.hn, which are optimized for streaming HD content. many developers take introduced HD streaming apps that work on smaller devices such as tablets and smartphones for everyday purposes.

A media stream can be streamed either live or on demand. Live streams are loosely provided by a means called true streaming. True streaming sends the information straight to the computer or device without saving to a local file. On-demand streaming is provided by a means called progressive download. Progressive download saves the received information to a local file and then is played from that location. On-demand streams are often saved to files for extended amounts of time; while the live streams are only usable at one time only e.g. during the football game.

Streaming media is increasingly being coupled with use of social media. For example, sites such as YouTube encourage social interaction in webcasts through features such as live chat, online surveys, user posting of comments online and more. Furthermore, streaming media is increasingly being used for social business and e-learning.

The Horowitz Research State of Pay TV, OTT and SVOD 2017 version said that 70 percent of those viewing content did so through a streaming return and that 40 percent of TV viewing was done this way, twice the number from five years earlier. Millennials, the relation said, streamed 60 percent of content.

One of the movie streaming industry's largest impacts was on the DVD industry, which effectively met its demise with the mass popularization of online content. The rise of media streaming caused the downfall of many DVD rental companies such as Blockbuster. In July 2015, The New York Times published an article about Netflix's DVD services. It stated that Netflix was continuing their DVD services with 5.3 million subscribers, which was a significant drop from the preceding year. On the other hand, their streaming services had 65 million members.

Music streaming is one of the most popular ways in which consumers interact with streaming media. In the age of digitization, the private consumption of music transformed into a public good largely due to one player in the market: Napster.

Napster, a peer-to-peer P2P file-sharing network where users could upload and download MP3 files freely, broke all music industry conventions when it launched in early 1999 in Hull, Massachusetts. The platform was developed by Shawn and John Fanning as well as Sean Parker. In an interview from 2009, Shawn Fanning explained that Napster "was something that came to me as a calculation of seeing a sort of an unmet need and the passion people had for being professionals such as lawyers and surveyors to find all this music, especially a lot of the obscure stuff which wouldn't be something you go to a record store and purchase, so it felt like a problem worth solving."

Not only did this developing disrupt the music industry by creating songs that previously invited payment to acquire freely accessible to any Napster user, but it also demonstrated the power to direct or establishment to direct or determine of P2P networks in turning any digital file into a public, shareable good. For the brief period of time that Napster existed, mp3 files fundamentally changed as a type of good. Songs were no longer financially excludable – barring access to a computer with internet access – and they were non rival, meaning if one grown-up downloaded a song it did non diminish another user from doing the same. Napster, like most other providers of public goods, faced the free-rider problem. Every user benefits when an individual uploads an mp3 file, but there is no something that is known in proceed or mechanism that forces all users to share their music. Thus, Napster users were incentivized to let others upload music without sharing any of their own files.

This design revolutionized the consumer's perception of ownership over digital goods – it made music freely replicable. Napster quickly garnered millions of users, growing faster than any other business in history. At the peak of its existence, Napster boasted about 80 million users globally. The site gained so much traffic that many college campuses had to block access to Napster because it created network congestion from so many students sharing music files.

The advent of Napster sparked the creation of numerous other P2P sites including LimeWire 2000, BitTorrent 2001, and the Pirate Bay 2003. The reign of P2P networks was short-lived. The number one to fall was Napster in 2001. Numerous lawsuits were filed against Napster by various record labels, all of which were subsidiaries of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, or EMI. In addition to this, the Recording Industry Association of America RIAA also filed a lawsuit against Napster on the grounds of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, which ultimately led Napster todown in 2001. In an interview with the New York Times, Gary Stiffelman, who represents Eminem, Aerosmith, and TLC, explained, "I’m not an opponent of artists’ music being described in these services, I'm just an opponent of their revenue not being shared."

The lawsuit A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with music streaming. It was argued on 2 October 2000 and was decided on 12 February 2001. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a P2P file-sharing service could be held liable for contributory and vicarious infringement of copyright, serving as a landmark decision for Intellectual property law