The 2025 Streaming Media All-Stars
31 Mar 2025
After a 12-year hiatus, Streaming Media is bringing back the Streaming Media All-Stars for 2025 to pay tribute to a select group of key technology innovators who are driving and disrupting the streaming industry.
Streaming Year in Review 2025: Online Video Is Now an Advertising-Led Business
28 Mar 2025
Old Hollywood got Wall Street's memo: "Do whatever it takes to do what Netflix is doing." And finally, the studios have begun making money from streaming. With the exception of NBCUniversal, the biggest legacy media companies all reported a profit from their direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses in Q3 2024. They got there by variously writing down or shedding cable assets, slashing jobs, hiking prices, policing password-sharing, improving bundled offerings, and putting the full focus of their business strategy into online.
The State of the Video Codec Market 2025
28 Mar 2025
HEVC rode the 4K/HDR wave to success, but AV1, VVC, and LCEVC lack an equivalent killer app. With CDNs racing to the bottom on pricing and new royalty pools threatening to increase costs, codec adoption is no longer just about technical merit—it's about survival. These are the issues I'll explore in this article.
The State of Live Sports Streaming 2025
28 Mar 2025
The sports media sector continues to undergo rapid change, with streaming aggregators attempting to reconsolidate for greater efficiency but still falling short of traditional broadcast models in reach and revenue.
Streamticker: The Biggest Streaming Mergers and Acquisitions of 2024
28 Mar 2025
The 2024 edition of Streamticker, recapping the streaming industry's most momentous mergers and acquisitions of 2023, kicked off with Disney's gobbling up the last extant portions of Hulu, as Comcast ceded its remaining 33% stake. But if the late-2023 deal marked only the quiet conclusion of an already-silent partnership, the much noisier news of Jan. 6, 2025, found Disney absorbing sports-centric streamer Fubo and merging it with Hulu Live + TV. Here we'll review this and other done (or more nearly done) M&A deals that reshuffled the streaming industry in 2024.
Cloud Control: How to Meet the Challenges of Cloud Migration and Operation
03 Feb 2025
COVID accelerated the push to IP-based streaming workflows for many companies, proving that live streaming at scale via the cloud was possible, although not always in tip-top form. Live streaming has been something we've been covering since this publication started, but here we are looking at content that has traditionally been delivered via production trucks, satellites, and a lot of on-prem resources.
How to Monetize Interactive Live Sports Streaming with Real-Time SSAI
03 Feb 2025
Interactivity revenue generator Play Anywhere and ultra-low-latency live streaming platform Phenix Real Time Solutions partner for real-time SSAI at scale
Media Over QUIC and the Future of High-Quality, Low-Latency Streaming
05 Dec 2024
Media Over QUIC aspires to streamline the entire streaming process by bringing both contribution and distribution into a single protocol again, reducing the need for intermediary transformations. Since MoQ is still in the early stages of development, it will take some time to see it deliver on this promise.
The 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards
09 Dec 2024
The readers have spoken! We've counted all of the votes in the 2024 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards, and—drumroll, please—it is now my pleasure and sworn duty to present winners and runners-up in each of our 17 categories.
The Generative AI Industrial Revolution
27 Sep 2024
Generative AI may prove even more divisive to society than the Industrial Revolution. There are many questions well worth examining regarding gen AI's impact on the streaming industry, the media and entertainment world, and more. In this article, I'm going to focus on a few streaming use cases in the hope of providing a broader perspective on the changes happening in our world now and those we can expect going forward.
Presenting the 2024 Streaming Media 100
21 Oct 2024
Here we reveal the 2024 Streaming Media 100, our list of the top 100 companies in the streaming universe outside of Europe. This list complements the Streaming Media Europe 51, which recognizes Europe's key streaming innovators, exemplars, and disruptors.
Q&A: NBCUniversal SVP Monica Williams Talks Streaming the Olympics, Cross-Platform CX, and the Power of Metadata
24 Jul 2024
In this wide-ranging interview with Monica Williams, NBCUniversal's SVP of digital products and operations for the company's content distribution business, we discuss how the proliferation of digital platforms across the OTT, CTV, and online ecosystems has brought new content distribution challenges, the boon of metadata for improving customer experiences, and the 17-day everything-must-go-perfectly marathon of distributing the Olympics.
AI and Streaming Media
29 Jul 2024
This article explores the current state of AI in the streaming encoding, delivery, playback, and monetization ecosystems. By understanding the developments and considering key questions when evaluating AI-powered solutions, streaming professionals can make informed decisions about incorporating AI into their video processing pipelines and prepare for the future of AI-driven video technologies.
Review: Blackmagic Design Micro Studio Camera 4K G2
06 Aug 2024
The Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera 4K G2 has nice upgrades, great capability with the USB-C, and high-quality recording to external SSDs. The HDMI out is a welcome feature as well in terms of monitoring and being able to change settings wherever the camera might be used.
All the News That’s Fit for FAST
14 May 2024
News broadcasting is one of the most exciting and quickly growing areas for FAST development, highlighted by the recent announcement of the BBC/AMC 24-hour live FAST news channel. Other legacy media news broadcasters, such as Scripps, Sinclair, Hearst, and USA Today, have also entered the FAST news space, many of them with a focus on local content. What are some of the current trends and challenges for FAST news delivery? In this article, several leading industry commentators provide insight.
The State of Live Sports Streaming 2024
04 Apr 2024
Live content is led by sports, and fan appetite—much like bidding for rights—shows no sign of slowing down as the calendar turns to 2024.
Q&A: Adtaxi's Murry Woronoff Says Streaming TV Levels Have Surpassed 80% of U.S. Adults in 2024
22 Mar 2024
A new report by Adtaxi, one of the nation's fastest-growing digital marketing agencies, has revealed that more Americans than ever are now defaulting to streaming as their primary viewing content source. Murry Woronoff, Agency Director - Marketing Research and Consumer Insights at Adtaxi, spoke with Streaming Media's Tyler Nesler about many specific aspects of the report and what the findings reveal about the current state of streaming as the industry continues to evolve rapidly.
Review: Magewell Director Mini
05 Jan 2024
Magewell's new Director Mini is a mini marvel. This 5.5" "all-in-one" production tool with a $1,299 street price can mix multiple inputs and do picture-in-picture graphics, audio mixing, recording, streaming, and more, as IEBA's Anthony Burokas explains in this in-depth review.
State of Streaming Snapshot: Pinpointing Streaming’s Pricing Pain Points
26 Oct 2023
Rising fundamental costs morph into rising platform costs for content owners and consumers
The 2023 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards
20 Nov 2023
The readers have spoken! Here we present North America's top tech solutions of 2023, as chosen by the readers of Streaming Media.