Streaming media is not a real industry

By - May 22, 2005 By Damien Stolarz for SiliconValleyWatcher Streaming_Media.jpg

Streaming media, as far as I can determine, is a euphemism for "internet audio and video.". Companies don't want to be typecast as audio or video specialists, so they use the term "streaming media". But unfortunately, "streaming" is one of those useless "in" terms. When I told the flight attendant on my way to a New York conference that I was speaking about streaming video, she stared blankly and asked what streaming was.

Then, at the conference, after my six hour talk on Windows Media, my friend, also a presenter, told me that he didn't consider "streaming media" an industry. A day later, while speaking to a prospective publisher, the editor wondered if "streaming media" was a good term to use.

I tend to agree. Sure, with enough branding, the abused term "streaming" could take hold. In marketing buzz-speak, it essentially means "putting video on a web page or something."
But the argument against using the term to describe an industry goes something like this: Television is an industry; but "analog broadcasting" isn't. Consumers don't care about how broadcasting is implemented except as far as that affects price points and features. Tech geeks excepted, people generally don't worry whether you'll need an antenna on the roof, or plug something in to your cable box or hub.

Presumably, the promise of streaming media is that it will "deliver your content over the Internet or networks". But then all the work of streaming media, except in brand-new industries such as downloadable music, is simply a replacement for existing technology, i.e. "now we don't have to Fedex high-quality training DVDs to our branch offices, we can spend the same amount of money downloading low quality versions of them and hiring IT staff to hook up T1's to each office..."

The StreamingMedia article IPTV and Streaming: Distinguishing the Differences discusses some of this. Streaming technology, at high bitrates over well-controlled networks, just looks like, um, cable TV. But of course, it's more difficult (currently) to get this working versus traditional cable, and the quality of service can be lower.

We had the same problem a few years ago when I was working in the P2P "industry". Everyone liked to point out that P2P (peer-to-peer networking, i.e. the technology that powered Napster) was a technology and not a business model. Three years later, I still work in what I guess you could call the "P2P" industry, but my customers are in the video entertainment industry.

TThat's the case in many industries. Once a technology works well, the industry is no longer named after the technology. P2P technologies, once working, aren't marketed as P2P. Google uses "artificial intelligence" extensively but no sane marketer would dare call it that.

"Digital video" is a much more marketable moniker that doesn't specify a specific network transport technology, but encompasses all the ramifications of "going digital" with your media.

I'm not sure a rose by the name of "streaming media" will ever smell as sweet.
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By - May 22, 2005 | Permalink | Category: Digital Video
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