New Report Reveals Radical Changes to Streaming Industry Over the Past Year

A newly released report in our semi-annual State of Streaming series highlights several key growth areas for streaming. 精心制作的 Help Me Stream 研究 Foundation 为流媒体和赞助商谐波, the report also reveals that the industry may continue to accelerate even as the world comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic this Spring.

Along with the report, which can be 在这里下载, the team at Unisphere研究 put together an infographic highlighting key trends, which you can see at the end of this article. (点击这里 or on the version below for the full-size, downloadable PDF.)

One trend we’ve seen over the past three State of Streaming surveys is the growth in religious organizations using streaming.

It comes as no surprise that houses of worship used more streaming during the pandemic lockdowns, 我们在 “获取宗教”面板 at last month's 流媒体 East Connect, but the study reveals that the usage continues to rise even in spring 2021. 事实上, 我们看到了50%的增长, 年复一年, of respondents from religious organizations and houses of worship.

除了宗教组织, we also saw a 25% growth in education respondents, as well as artists—music and visual—who now make up about 10% of the latest survey’s respondents.

Another area that continues to trend upwards is those who both create and distribute content. While our early State of Streaming reports had about an even mix of those who created or distributed content, this newest survey shows a full two-thirds of respondents both create and distribute media content.

一年前, only 46% indicated they did both, which appears to indicate that the last year of Zoom meetings and online-only events made more respondents—and their organizations—comfortable in not only generating more content but also in finding more ways to distribute it.

This point is driven home by the fact that the group of respondents who only create content, 但是不要分发它, 从19%降到了12%, while those who only distribute content has fallen from 20% to 13%

最后, when asked about bandwidth usage and storage requirements—and ways to address both—respondents noted that video compression and network optimization were two key ways to address bandwidth limitations and storage shortfalls. The industry has been contemplating the need for both.

In a separate question about challenges in video delivery, video quality was also the key concern, even above latency and scalability. So it’s clear that the state of streaming lands the industry at a crossroads of video quality versus bandwidth and storage, especially as some ISPs implement data caps at the same time that overall content resolutions are rising from 720p to 1080p60 or even into 4K.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT.