Streaming Media Quiz

Overview of Streaming Media

• Streaming media refers to multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements.

• Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, allowing end-users to start playing digital video or digital audio content before the entire file has been transmitted.

• Livestreaming is the real-time delivery of content during production, requiring a form of source media, an encoder, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content.

• Streaming is most prevalent in video on demand and streaming television services, but other services stream music or video games.

• Streaming media was first used for tape drives meant to slowly ramp up and run for the entire track.

• Théâtrophone enabled subscribers to listen to opera and theatre performances over telephone lines, starting in 1881.

• In the early 1920s, George Owen Squier was granted patents for a system for the transmission and distribution of signals over electrical lines, which was the technical basis for Muzak.

• During the late 1990s and early 2000s, users had increased access to computer networks, especially the Internet, leading to the streaming of audio and video content to computer users in their homes and workplaces.

• The Recording Industry Association of America revealed through its 2015 earnings report that streaming services were responsible for 34.3% of the year's total music industry's revenue, growing 29% from the previous year and becoming the largest source of income, pulling in around $2.4 billion.

• The streaming wars refer to the new era of competition between video streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and Peacock.

• Streaming media is increasingly being coupled with the use of social media, and it is also being used for social business and e-learning.

• The rise of media streaming caused the downfall of many DVD rental companies such as Blockbuster, and music streaming is one of the most popular ways in which consumers interact with streaming media.The Evolution of Music Streaming: From Napster to COVID-19

• Napster disrupted the music industry by making songs freely accessible to any Napster user through a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network where users could upload and download MP3 files freely.

• Napster demonstrated the power of P2P networks in turning any digital file into a public, shareable good and fundamentally changed the consumer's perception of ownership over digital goods.

• Napster quickly garnered millions of users, growing faster than any other business in history, with about 80 million users globally at its peak.

• The advent of Napster sparked the creation of numerous other P2P sites including LimeWire, BitTorrent, and the Pirate Bay, but the reign of P2P networks was short-lived as they met a similar fate in court.

• A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with music streaming and served as a landmark decision for Intellectual property law.

• Music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Amazon Music have shifted music streaming to a club-type good, financially excludable but non-rival.

• As of 2019, Spotify has over 207 million users in 78 countries, Apple Music has about 60 million, and SoundCloud has 175 million.

• Music streaming revenue exceeded that of traditional revenue streams (e.g. record sales, album sales, downloads) in 2018.

• The COVID-19 pandemic has driven an increase in misinformation and disinformation, particularly on streaming platforms like YouTube and podcasts.

• Video and audio streams are compressed to make the file size smaller, and the quality of the interaction between servers and users is based on the workload of the streaming service.

• Datagram protocols, such as the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), send the media stream as a series of small packets, while the Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), and the Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP) were specifically designed to stream media over networks.

• HTTP adaptive bitrate streaming is based on HTTP progressive download and seems to incorporate both the advantages of using a standard web protocol and the ability to be used for streaming even live content.

• IP multicast provides a means to send a single media stream to a group of recipients on a computer network.Streaming Media: Applications, Marketing, and Challenges

• Streaming media refers to content that is delivered electronically to users through the internet, allowing them to watch or listen in real-time without downloading.

• IP multicast is a protocol used to manage delivery of multicast streams to groups of recipients on a LAN, but routers and firewalls between LANs must allow the passage of packets destined to multicast groups.

• Peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols allow prerecorded streams to be sent between computers, preventing the server and its network connections from becoming a bottleneck.

• Media that is livestreamed can be recorded through certain media players such as VLC player or through the use of a screen recorder, and live-streaming platforms such as Twitch may also incorporate a video on demand system that allows automatic recording of live broadcasts.

• Streaming media is used for various applications such as long video lectures, online concerts, and video entertainment platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+.

• Marketers have found many opportunities offered by streaming media and the platforms that offer them, especially in light of the significant increase in the use of streaming media during COVID lockdowns from 2020 onwards.

• Challenges associated with streaming media include copyright issues related to international exploitation of rights, widespread use of standards and metadata in digital files, and recording and distribution of streamed content, which is an issue for many companies that rely on revenue based on views or attendance.

• Greenhouse gas emissions from streaming music were estimated at between 0.2 and 0.35 million metric tons CO2eq per year in the United States, which is less than other everyday activities such as eating.

• One hour of streaming or videoconferencing emits 150–1,000 grams of carbon dioxide, requires 2–12 liters of water, and demands a land area adding up to about the size of an iPad Mini.

• Turning the camera off during video calls can reduce the greenhouse gas and water use footprints by 96%, and an 86% reduction is possible by using standard definition rather than high definition when streaming content with apps such as Netflix or Hulu.

• Making data centers carbon neutral and downloading the music for offline listening are ways to decrease greenhouse gas emissions associated with streaming music.

• Spotify service has a built-in local cache to reduce the necessity of repeating song streams.