The State of Media & Entertainment Streaming 2025

Not unexpectedly, 2024 saw a slowing down in the rapid user acquisition that entertain­ment streaming platforms enjoyed in pre­vious years without the influx of new plat­forms and the boost in subscriber numbers gained during the pandemic.

Streaming Year in Review 2025: Online Video Is Now an Advertising-Led Business

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 Live Sport Streaming 2025

The sport 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.

Buyers' Guide: Hardware Transcoders

Although software transcoding is accept­able for transcoding most VOD streams and even low-volume live programming, most high-volume live applications need hardware for efficient transcoding, both to save you money and to save the planet. This buyers' guide will cover: What hardware transcoders are, what you need to bring to the table to identify the best hardware transcoder, factors to consider when choosing one, choosing a hardware transcoder for cloud workflows, and choosing a hardware transcoder for on-prem workflows.

The State of the Video Codec Market 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 Corporate Video 2025

Due to limited growth in the size of the market, the solution to increasing profitability in the corporate video space has been consolidation and cost-cutting. After some signs of movement in acquisitions in 2023, 2024 final­ly saw the larger companies in the space getting ac­quired or beginning to look for formal partnerships or acquisitions.

Streamticker: The biggest streaming mergers and acquisitions of 2024

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.

MainStreaming CEO Tassilo Raesig Talks Resilient Edge Delivery and Optimising QoS and QoE at Scale

In this interview, MainStreaming CEO Tassilo Raesig discusses the ongoing challenges facing global CDN services in their efforts to deliver broadcast-grade streams that meet client expectations for performance, scale, and monetisation. Raesig explains how MainStreaming's edge solutions work within ISP networks to create resilient infrastructure, optimise video delivery, and reduce network strain.

AI and Entertainment: a Q&A with Hub Research's Jon Giegengack

AI is rapidly changing the way people interact with entertainment, and companies are embracing AI to streamline operations and improve efficiencies in producing, marketing, and distributing content. Hub Entertainment Research released its first study on AI in Entertainment, revealing that while most consumers have heard of generative AI, very few understand how it works or what it's for. Jon Giegengack of Hub Research discusses the report's findings and implications in this Q&A with Streaming Media's Tyler Nesler.

The Rise of Automated Translation in the Localisation Industry: A Q&A With Maria Castañeda of Lokalise

Lokalise, a cloud-based localisation and translation management system, has observed a fascinating shift in how content is being translated and has some intriguing data on the rise of automated translations versus human translations. Their findings illustrate a significant increase in automated translations in 2024. Maria Castañeda, Lead Product Marketing Manager at Localise, answers some questions about these new insights.

Altman Solon Global Sports Survey - A Q&A With David Dellea

Altman Solon's David Dellea discusses the findings from their 2024 Global Sports Survey, with topics including the impact of younger generations' changing consumption habits on live sports, the role of AI in enhancing viewing experiences, the challenges of content fragmentation, and more.

Free Streaming and Sports

The second half of 2023 saw the launch of numerous premium brands and the rise of exclusive deals. What has happened in the FAST sports landscape since then? Let's find out.

Review: Magewell Director Mini 3.0

All-in-One (AIO) live production devices leverage the latest mobile CPU and GPU power and integrated capability, with real hardware connections for multiple HDMI ports, ethernet, headphones, audio input, and more—all from one manufacturer so there's just one update cycle to track. Magewell recently came out with the 3.0 update to their Director Mini AIO production tablet (Figure 1), and they are pushing the envelope with what these little powerhouses can do.

Rebundling Fatigue, Ad Tolerance on the Rise, Says TiVo Video Trends Research Report

We're here to parse a new market report from TiVo called "Q2 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report: North America Consumers Getting Smarter as Fatigue Sets In Amidst the Re-bundling Marathon." The title is a mouthful, and the research doesn't deliver on everything it promises.

Q&A: Microsoft Worldwide M&E Strategy Director Simon Crownshaw Talks Gen AI

In this expansive interview with Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft's worldwide media and entertainment strategy director, we discuss how Microsoft customers are leveraging generative AI in all stages of the streaming workflow and how they're using it in content delivery and to enhance user experiences in a range of use cases. Crownshaw also digs deep into how Microsoft is building asset management architecture and the critical role metadata plays in effective large-language models (LLMs), maximizing the value of available data.

Boosting Streaming Profitability with IMAX StreamSmart

Streaming organisations must be able to accurately measure and swiftly assess the impact of workflow changes to validate their effectiveness. Therefore, they must have access to the right metrics that can reliably predict viewer perceptions of quality for achieving bitrate savings without compromising the viewing experience.

Dynamic Paywalls for Streaming Services

What would happen if we started to have dynamic paywalls for streaming ser­vices? Leveraging user data, machine learning, and generative AI could create offers based on con­sumption patterns. Some companies are dab­bling in this, but now we have the technology to really start developing it.

The Economics of Music: Streaming vs. CD Sales—A Deeper Look

In recent years, a narrative has emerged pitting streaming services against traditional music sales, particularly CDs and vinyl. Social media posts often circulate claiming that a single CD sale is worth hundreds of hours of streaming for an artist. While these comparisons can be eye-catching, they often oversimplify a complex ecosystem and misdirect artists' frustrations. This article aims to unpack the intricacies of music royalties, challenging common misconceptions and highlighting the real issues at play.

The Streaming Media European Innovation Awards Winners

The 16th annual Streaming Media European Innovation Awards competition - formerly known as the Readers' Choice Awards - returns with 12 categories. With more than 9,000 votes, who are the finalists? And who are this year's winners?

Improving Audience Engagement With Virtual Meetings and Events

Since the mass adoption of working from home during the pandemic, we have seen massive growth in platforms such as Teams and Zoom for not only meetings that would have previously been carried out face-to-face, but also for training sessions, events, and internal communications. While being incredibly useful and widely used communication tools, these services are not without some serious problems when it comes to engaging and retaining an audience.