Streaming Services Research Articles

Streaming forward: Adoption considerations for the major recorded music markets in CARICOM

Music Streaming Services (MSS) have recently emerged as the main format for showcasing and monetizing sound recordings by record labels and artists in the international recorded music sector. In the Caribbean, however, stakeholders have been slow to adopt and integrate these digital music platforms into their overall recorded music strategies. Within this context, this paper explores the key economic opportunities and challenges associated with the late adoption of the platform-based streaming music model. Using self-administered structured interviews with nine regional experts from the three major music markets, as well as an analysis of audio-visual and digital materials and review of documents, the information is derived using a qualitative research approach, supported by a grounded theory strategy of inquiry. The findings illustrate that on one hand there is cautious optimism with respect to the potential for the re-construction of revenue streams, due to stronger royalty inflows associated with new uses of music in the digital arena. The extent to which this is realized contends with the quantum of royalty payouts actually received by rights-holders and their overall willingness to licence their rights to MSS. Additionally, MSS provides the platform for rights-owners to reach glocal audiences. However, this is reliant on the content and user-friendly features embedded in the platforms and the readiness of regional artists to be discovered and monetized via third party playlists.

Adaptive cloud resource allocation for large-scale crowdsourced multimedia live streaming services

Adaptive cloud resource allocation for large-scale crowdsourced multimedia live streaming services

Conversion in Music Streaming Services

Demand spillovers between distribution channels are critical for revenue streams in the music industry. Drawing on consumption capital theory, this study investigates the impact of a subscription (unsubscription) or upgrade (downgrade) in music streaming on live, physical, and digital music consumption. The propensity score matching approach applied to a biannual panel with six waves indicates that conversion in music subscriptions spills over to the live market and changes willingness to pay (WTP) and demand for live events. Converting from no streaming or free streaming to a premium subscription leads to a particularly high surplus in WTP and demand for live music. Unsubscribing or downgrading a music subscription decreases WTP and demand for live events. However, changes in music subscriptions are rather unrelated to physical and digital purchases. A scenario analysis indicates that deleting the free streaming option outperforms restricting the features available to free users. The authors provide contingencies of this finding.

Impacto del COVID-19 en la Industria Cinematográfica: Inversión e Innovación en los servicios de Streaming

Impacto del COVID-19 en la Industria Cinematográfica: Inversión e Innovación en los servicios de Streaming

Relocating video cultures

This special issue ‘relocates’ video cultures by focusing on the specific industrial dynamics and practices of six different countries. It is in conversation with scholarship that challenges the conceptualization of streaming as a universal force, and instead foregrounds the importance of location. The emergence of streaming and its disruptive influences on audiovisual industries have mostly been approached in relation to US-based multinational streaming services, and the articles in this issue demonstrate how the implications of streaming vary significantly depending on national contexts. Each contribution traces the trajectory of pre-digital cultures that led to the nation-specific consumption patterns of streaming video to date. We hope this special issue helps advance approaches that are attentive to locality and diversity beyond the US streaming culture.

Soft Delivery: Survey on a New Paradigm for Wireless and Mobile Multimedia Streaming

The increasing demand for video streaming services is the key driver of modern wireless and mobile communications. Although many studies have designed digital-based delivery schemes to send video content over wireless and mobile networks, significant quality degradation, known as cliff and leveling effects, often occurs owing to fluctuating channel characteristics. In this article, we present a comprehensive summary of soft delivery, which is a new paradigm for wireless and mobile video streaming and discuss the future directions of soft delivery. Existing studies found that introducing multi-dimensional cosine transform, human vision system, and graph signal processing can make soft delivery schemes more effective in untethered immersive experiences, including virtual reality and volumetric media, than digital-based delivery schemes. In addition, this study finds that soft delivery has the potential to be a new standard to deliver deep neural network models and tactile information over wireless and mobile networks.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Walt Disney Company

The COVID-19 pandemic had severe effects on the global economy in 2020. Among the most affected sectors were tourism and the entertainment industry, whose poor performance affected businesses that relied on the two sectors health. The Walt Disney Company comprised such companies, having diversified into business units that aligned themselves with the two sectors. The present paper examined the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on Disney by analyzing the performance of its business units. To do so, it sought to answer two research questions exploring the effects of the pandemic on the tourism and entertainment industries. The paper utilized a case study approach in that it evaluated Disney in isolation to other companies and conducted an in-depth analysis on the company. Results show that the pandemic had negative impacts on the tourism sector, but a mix of negative and positive effects on the entertainment industry. Negative effects included a loss of tourism numbers and a decline in the theatrical entertainment sector, while positive effects included the growth of video streaming services. Those effects translated to impacts on businesses such as Disney, whose diversified operations expose it to the tourism and entertainment sectors. Thus, business units that relied on tourism suffered negative effects, while those dependent on the entertainment sector recorded some positive effects. The paper concludes by recommending that Disney focus its efforts on growing SBUs that demonstrated resilience during the pandemic, such as the Direct-to-Consumer and International SBU that relies on the entertainment industry.

Why does Gen Z watch virtual streaming VTube anime videos with avatars on Twitch?

Abstract Purpose Live streaming has become an increasingly popular media, which allows individuals to record and broadcast simultaneously on the internet. Streamers, individuals who conduct live streaming videos, create diverse media content on live streaming video platforms. Most streamers show up with their real-person appearances via live streaming. However, Virtual YouTubers, known as VTubers, use avatars to conduct live streaming. In recent years, Twitch has become one of the most well-known video live streaming services for VTubers. This study aims to explore attractiveness between the viewer and VTuber through parasocial interactions, and the influence that attractiveness might have on actual mediated interactions between viewers and the VTuber. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was conducted to study the attractiveness of VTubers’ live streaming and viewers’ engagement with VTubers. Findings Parasocial interactions can be a factor drawing viewers to watch VTubers’ live streaming. Physical attractiveness, social attractiveness, and task attractiveness play important roles in influencing viewers’ choices on specific VTuber’s live streaming and further social interactions with them. To be more specific, the interactions with VTubers, the content of live streaming, the personality of VTubers, and the visual design of the VTubers’ avatars are important factors that attract respondents to watch live streaming. Additionally, the findings show the pattern of viewers’ interactions with VTubers. Active viewers typically leave comments to be acknowledged by VTubers and further reactions. Passive viewers are influenced by time, language barrier, character, and emotional health. Practical implications VTubers and the platform are given suggestions on how to design and improve live streams and help VTubers to promote to attract viewers. Social implications It introduces VTubing as a subculture and shows how viewers consume VTubers’ live streaming. Originality/value This is the first study to explore the roles of attractiveness on viewers selecting and engaging with VTubers’ live streaming. It illustrates the importance of companionship, avatars, and the personality of VTubers in influencing viewers’ willingness to watch live streaming.

Shared cinematic experience and emerging technologies: Integrating mixed-reality components for the future of cinema

The enduring appeal of traditional cinema viewing in the face of alternative experiences, including streaming services and emerging technologies, such as extended reality, is rooted in its esthetic, cultural, and social significance. While the psychological appeal of shared cinematic experiences has gained attention in scholarship, there is a need to further explore the potential enhancement of these experiences through the integration of immersive technologies. The communal nature of cinema fosters social connection, especially in a post-pandemic context marked by widespread social isolation. This study highlights the psychological benefits of shared cinematic experiences and emphasizes the next phase of cinematic evolution, which integrates mixed-reality components while retaining the traditional communal and focused viewing experience. By merging physical and virtual elements, mixed reality offers a unique avenue for exploring the intersection of technology and psychology in the context of cinema. In addition, this article addresses practical applications for filmmakers and industry professionals by outlining technical considerations for integrating mixed-reality elements throughout the filmmaking process, from production to distribution and viewing. The integration of mixed-reality components represents a significant step in the evolution of cinema, providing valuable insights into its potential implications for the research community and the film industry.

Lifestyle Analysis And Factors Affecting Consumer Interest In Post Pandemi Video On Demand Netflix Subscriptions

The impact that has occurred since the presence of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to changes in people's lifestyles in carrying out their activities including carrying out their hobbies. On of the most popular activities for the public during the pandemic is watching online videos through streaming services using Video on Demand such as Netflix, which is known that Netflix is the online streaming application that is most in demand by the public as their choice of watching videos . Given this phenomenon, this study aims to analyze lifestyle and the factors that influence consumer interest in subscribing to Netflix after the pandemic. The type of research used in this study is a qualitative method by using literature/library research to obtain data and information used by researchers to analyze. The results of the study indicate that there are factors that influence consumer interest in subscribing to Netflix, namely, work, hobbies, age, gender, and individual attitude. The results of the analysis show that changes in lifestyle during the pandemic will greatly affect consumer interest in subscribing to Netflix.

Beyond Netflix: Ownership and content strategies among non-US-based video streaming services

Major multi-territory streaming services such as Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ dominate this new sector of video distribution, but the economic features of internet-distributed video enable a diverse sector. This article examines 16 non-US-based multi-territory services and 10 national/regional markets to investigate the other types of transnational streaming businesses emerging. The analysis assesses the ownership of the 16 services, as all but one emerge from existing corporations with activities in the audiovisual or distribution sector, to identify the implications of different ownership priorities. It then pairs the ownership analysis with data on the size and country of origin of the services’ content libraries. The findings identify subcategories of multi-territory streamers and, by considering an array of national markets, reveal the counter-strategies available to non-US-based services.

Video Streaming and Cloud Gaming Services Over 4G and 5G: A Complete Network and Service Metrics Dataset

The development of telecommunications, particularly mobile communications, has led to the emergence of numerous multimedia services. As these services become increasingly reliant on connectivity, the network has a huge impact on the user experience. However, it is difficult to assess the End-to- End (E2E) performance of the service because of the limited access to the application data and encryption used to secure and integrate the network information exchanged. In this context, this work presents a dataset based on several metrics, namely Key Quality Indicators (KQIs), representing different services' E2E conditions. In particular, video streaming and Cloud Gaming (CG) services are considered in the dataset. Furthermore, a detailed description of the testbed where the dataset has been generated is given, discussing the rationale behind the choices made for its development.

On-demand online video streaming services: a bibliometric analysis and future research agenda

ABSTRACT An exponential increase in online video streaming literature on OTT platforms during and post-COVID indicates the growing popularity of streaming services. The present bibliometric review analyses 324 publications from Web-of-Science indexed journals to explore current trends in the on-demand online video streaming service’s literature. The review also displays the thematic map of keywords to identify gaps. The trend analysis confirmed an exponential growth in publications with a 91.58% explanation. The findings suggest (1) common terminologies for online streaming video terms, (2) more inter and intra-country author collaborations, and (3) An IPO (Inputs – Process – Outcomes) framework.

Application of UAVs and Image Processing for Riverbank Inspection

Many rivers are polluted by trash and garbage that can affect the environment. Riverbank inspection usually relies on workers of the environmental protection office, but sometimes the places are unreachable. This study applies unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to perform the inspection task, which can significantly relieve labor work. Two UAVs are used to cover a wide area of riverside and capture riverbank images. The images from different UAVs are stitched using the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) algorithm. Static and dynamic image stitching are tested. Different you only look once (YOLO) algorithms are applied to identify riverbank garbage. Modified YOLO algorithms improve the accuracy of riverine waste identification, while the SIFT algorithm stitches the images obtained from the UAV cameras. Then, the stitching results and garbage data are sent to a video streaming server, allowing government officials to check waste information from the real-time multi-camera stitching images. The UAVs utilize 4G communication to transmit the video stream to the server. The transmission distance is long enough for this study, and the reliability is excellent in the test fields that are covered by the 4G communication network. In the automatic reconnection mechanism, we set the timeout to 1.8 s. The UAVs will automatically reconnect to the video streaming server if the disconnection time exceeds the timeout. Based on the energy provided by the onboard battery, the UAV can be operated for 20 min in a mission. The UAV inspection distance along a preplanned path is about 1 km at a speed of 1 m/s. The proposed UAV system can replace inspection labor, successfully identify riverside garbage, and transmit the related information and location on the map to the ground control center in real time.

CD-LwTE: Cost- and Delay-Aware Light-Weight Transcoding at the Edge

The edge computing paradigm brings cloud capabilities close to the clients. Leveraging the edge’s capabilities can improve video streaming services by employing the storage capacity and processing power at the edge for caching and transcoding tasks, respectively, resulting in video streaming services with higher quality and lower latency. In this paper, we propose, a Cost-and Delay-aware Light-weight Transcoding approach at the Edge, in the context of HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS). The encoding of a video segment requires computationally intensive search processes. The main idea of is to store the optimal search results as metadata for each bitrate of video segments and reuse it at the edge servers to reduce the required time and computational resources for transcoding. Aiming at minimizing the cost and delay of Video-on-Demand (VoD) services, we formulate the problem of selecting an optimal policy for serving segment requests at the edge server, including (i) storing at the edge server, (ii) transcoding from a higher bitrate at the edge server, and (iii) fetching from the origin or a CDN server, as a Binary Linear Programming (BLP) model. As a result, stores the popular video segments at the edge and serves the unpopular ones by transcoding using metadata or fetching from the origin/CDN server. In this way, in addition to the significant reduction in bandwidth and storage costs, the transcoding time of a requested segment is remarkably decreased by utilizing its corresponding metadata. Moreover, we prove the proposed BLP model is an NP-hard problem and propose two heuristic algorithms to mitigate the time complexity of . We investigate the performance of in comprehensive scenarios with various video contents, encoding software, encoding settings, and available resources at the edge. The experimental results show that our approach (i) reduces the transcoding time by up to 97%, (ii) decreases the streaming cost, including storage, computation, and bandwidth costs, by up to 75%, and (iii) reduces delay by up to 48% compared to approaches.

A Greener Experience: Trade-Offs between QoE and CO2 Emissions in Today's and 6G Networks

While users of Internet multimedia services demand high Quality of Experience (QoE), meeting these demands results in energy consumption along the service delivery path, from the end user's device, through the network to the service infrastructure (e.g., in a cloud). This energy consumption typically implies carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are a primary driver of climate change. One contribution of this article is to quantify and illustrate the trade-off between the QoE of video streaming services and CO2 emissions. Kleinrock's power metric from queuing theory is applied to find operational points and recommended video bitrates of the QoE-sustainability tradeoff. Furthermore, considering that networks and service delivery infrastructures are still in the process of transitioning towards "green energy" consumption, we investigate the impact of "green users" accepting certain quality degradations so as to reduce CO2 emissions. Our discussions focus on two aspects: Is it more relevant to focus on green user behavior or green networking technology today and in the future in year 2030? What are the implications of solution approaches on the networking and communications technology?

A cultural levy or a digital streaming service tax: New film industry levies conflicting with the EU member states’s bilateral tax treaty obligations and OECD digital tax agreements?

This note highlights the obstacles that the film levy, as a form of financial contributions on video on demand (VoD) service providers under Article 13(2) of the 2018 EU Audiovisual Media Service Directive, may face in a cross-border context from an international tax perspective. In particular, the first obstacle is that the double tax treaties of member states exclude the possibility to levy income taxes on a foreign VoD service provider if it has no fixed and permanent presence, for example, an office, in the country. Second, the new global tax agreement on addressing the tax challenges of digitalization demands its parties (137 countries) to remove all unilateral domestic taxes on all digital services and all companies.

Improvement of Presence in Live Music Videos and Alleviation of Discomfort of Viewers by Zooming Operation

People can enjoy watching live performances without visiting live venues thanks to the development of live music streaming services on the Internet. However, such live music videos, especially those recorded by amateur band members, lack a sense of presence. Therefore, in the previous study, the authors proposed a method to improve the sense of presence in live music videos by performing zooming on the video frames. It achieved enhancing the sense of presence. However, it also increased the discomfort of the viewers. This is because the zooming was performed not on a music performer but in the center of the screen, resulting in an unnatural experience for the viewer. Therefore, in this paper, a new zooming method, which effectively emphasizes the music performer with intense movement, is proposed, introducing the concept of the “Main Spot”. The evaluation results through an experiment verified that the proposed method improved the sense of presence in live music videos and alleviated the discomfort of the viewers.

“Transformation or not?” the effect of broadcasters' role orientation transformation on their direct income

PurposeIn the actual livestreaming background, to obtain more income, some broadcasters will transform their original single role orientation into mixed one. This research study aims to conduct an empirical study on the influence of the broadcasters' role orientation transformation on the viewers' tipping behavior.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collect data from Kuai, a leading online live streaming service provider in China. The dataset includes 175,701 live streaming data from 971 broadcasters in 7 months. To avoid unobservable factors, the authors adopt two difference-in-differences (DID) models to estimate the effect of two kinds of broadcaster's role orientation transformation on the broadcaster’s direct income separately. And the authors use the Heckman-type correction to solve broadcasters’ self-selected problem.FindingsThe authors evaluated that there is a U-shape relationship between the broadcasters' role orientation transformation and their direct income. The broadcasters' direct income experienced a sharp decline for a short period of time after transformation and followed by a rise after a period of adaptation. And for broadcasters with different genders and amounts of fans, the influence degree of role orientation transformation is various.Originality/valueThis paper provides a fresh usage of the regulatory engagement theory in the brand new information communication technology. And it also explores the boundary effect of the participating object's self-factors in the regulatory engagement theory. Besides, this paper expands the research of livestreaming into natural background. Such results also provide operable suggestions for the livestream platform, the broadcaster himself and the enterprises who want to employ some broadcasters to recommend their products.

Disrupting Brazilian television: Streaming and the decline of Globo's hegemony in video cultures

The Brazilian audiovisual landscape has been monopolized by the Grupo Globo conglomerate and its commercial broadcast network, TV Globo, which established a common video experience centered on the telenovela. Although cable and the internet sowed seeds of discontent in the 2000s, it was only with the advent of video streaming services in the 2010s that Brazil's video landscape was transformed. This led to the multiplication of video cultures and greater access to transnational audiovisual flows. This article frames streaming as a competitive force that has compelled Grupo Globo to diversify its storytelling and representation, highlighting its potential to disrupt Brazil's video cultures and exposing the limits of cultural proximity. It examines how streaming services affect Brazilian video cultures and how preexisting conditions in Brazil provide opportunities and limitations to underline streaming's disruptive potential for Brazil's video cultures and Globo's declining hegemony and ability to adapt to the digital era.