20 Years of Streaming Media: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
By Jim Bask
From StreamingMedia
Streaming Media launched during the dot-com bubble, and while some of the early players faded away when their funding ran out, others helped chart the future of the industry.
As I write this, the top story on the Streaming Media website is about a report from Futuresource Consulting that says that there are now 125 million subscription video on demand (SVOD) subscriptions in the United States. That only accounts for 10 percent of total consumer spending on pay TV—which means cable and satellite operators are still the dominant forces in the market—but that number should give you pause, especially if you’ve been in the streaming media industry as long as Streaming Media has.
2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Streaming Media brand, which launched smack in the middle of the dotcom bubble, just a few years after the very first webcast. The early Streaming Media shows reflected that, with high profile speakers like Bill Gates and Mark Cuban and massive parties taking over venues like the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif., and the Ministry of Sound in London. I wish I could have been there, but my previous life as a music journalist had me writing for another dotcom company, Sonicnet, which put into practice the audio streaming that was being innovated by the attendees and exhibitors at Streaming Media conferences. Tim Siglin, who was there, wrote about the first 10 years in “A Decade of Streaming Media.”
We all know what happened to most dotcom companies. Some, like Cuban’s Broadcast.com, managed to sell for ridiculously inflated prices before the bubble burst, but most either blew through their funding and faded away before ever leaving a real mark or were acquired by larger companies, a few of which are still around. …read more