On April 15,1995, RealAudio was launched, unleashing the streaming revolution. Many content partners, including ABC News and National Public Radio participated, and RealAudio soon became a global phenomenon.
Over the past 25-years of streaming there have been numerous breakthroughs and milestones. Here are some of the most exciting and important ones:
Streaming media faced many challenges. The internet wasn’t initially designed to transport and synchronize audio and video. Reliability and quality were throttled by dial-up modems and lossy networks. Broadband was an aspiration. Competition was fierce and standards took time. Digital rights weren’t easily protected. Mobile lagged. In a world where anyone could be a broadcaster, it was still challenging to find great content for this new medium. The early audience for streaming media was small, skeptical, impatient, and confidant.
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ESPN SportsZone uses RealAudio to stream a live radio broadcast of a Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees baseball game. It is the first time that a sports fan could listen to a live game broadcast from anywhere in the world, via a personal computer.
RealVideo transformed the internet, turning it into an entirely new broadcast medium for TV, film, and personal videos.
Getting music off the internet before Napster was tricky, unreliable, and difficult. Napster’s software allowed people to dip into each other’s hard drives, and share their MP3 music files. Musicians were on the fence. Some loved it. Others did not.
The first time the entire world turned to the internet for live video breaking news.
Within days, “Lazy Sunday” was the first TV show clip to have a viral second life online, with over 2 million views. That week, YouTube’s traffic was up 83 percent, just five months after YouTube went online.
By creating compelling original programming designed for streaming, analyzing its user data to serve subscribers better, and most importantly, letting people consume content in the ways they prefer, Netflix disrupted the television industry and forced cable companies to change the way they do business.
Twitch.tv is one of the most successful online live streaming platforms in the world, with 200 million viewers and 2 million regular “streamers”.
Though it started out as a business platform, Zoom exploded in popularity years later during the COVID-19 pandemic: Virtual Happy Hours; Connecting families; Live sessions for work and education… and now the 2020 NFL Draft.
TikTok proves that there is a vast market looking for a few minutes of micro-entertainment and distraction each day. Initially embraced by young consumers, TikTok is now being used by brands and businesses alike.
COVID-19 fundamentally changed the way the world functioned, and proved the importance of streaming technology across multiple disciplines. Businesses and educators turned to Zoom & Microsoft Teams to conduct live video meetings, changing the way people do business and learn. Entertainment had to reinvent itself: All live talk (and even the big variety competition shows like American Idol) began streaming from home. Late Night entertainers did their shows from home with their families: Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Trevor Noah. Actor John Krasinski launched his own YouTube show: Some Good News. And families and best friends gathered regularly to virtually socialize during “Zoom Happy Hours”.
