If you haven’t been living under a rock, you may have already subscribed to streaming services. Why wouldn’t you? After all, the decision opens up a digital portal to virtually unlimited media libraries that you can watch anywhere, anytime.
The best part? Streaming services let you ensure that you don’t have to pay to access most movies and TV shows separately. Instead, a majority of their content libraries are included in your monthly subscription fee. This alone makes streaming a popular solution across the world.
But exactly how did streaming become this widespread door to entertainment? Here’s a quick outlook on the rise of streaming in the modern era and what to expect from it.
In this article
When Did the Current Streaming Era Begin?
You might think of Netflix as starting the current era of streaming, but that would be technically incorrect. While it is true that Netflix introduced the way to stream movies over the web in 2007, YouTube had already made it possible for people to upload, share, and watch videos over the web from 2005 onward. Over the years, streaming services kept evolving to finally lead to services like JustDubs alternatives in 2024 and beyond.
But before streaming reached its current point, you only had Netflix to turn to to watch the most popular TV shows and movies from across the world, including all major studios in the United States. However, once low latency video streaming started to carve its niche, studios like Disney, Warner Bros., and Paramount came out with their own streaming solutions.
Why Did Studios Start Their Own Streaming Services?
Besides having greater accessibility to streaming technologies, studios launched their own streaming services to have more control over their media distribution, use methods like direct-to-streaming releases without a third-party streamer, and earn more revenue than what they could get from licensing their content. You can think of this as studios taking a look at their enterprise accounting software and deciding that things needed to change for their bottom line to improve.
Once again, there are some misconceptions about recent history at play: While many people think that it all started in 2019, with the initiation of the so-called streaming wars by Disney, that is not the complete truth. In 2013, Amazon announced that it would distribute original programming for its Prime Video service. At the same time, independent websites like LosMovies and its alternatives continued to take hold over the web.
After the launch of Disney+, Warner Bros. went beyond its popular HBO Go service to offer HBO Max (now called Max). Soon after, studios like Paramount and even corporations like Apple joined the race. This also led to the creation of solutions like subscription management services that let people keep track of multiple streaming subscriptions and manage them with ease.
Where Does Streaming Stand Now?
Today, streaming stands as a huge industry, with almost every studio having its streaming service. But this has also caused things to go back to square one: Where streaming in its initial form was supposed to allow people to cut cable and watch the same content over the web at a lower price, the abundance of streaming services now emulates the price point of cable, where you need to pay each studio hundreds of dollars a year to access their media library.
While this has caused many people to choose their battles and pick their favorite streaming services like SockShare alternatives in 2024 and beyond, it has also led studios to bundle their services. Once again, this is highly reminiscent of the cable era, where channels used to come in bundles even if they rivaled each other in the industry.
What is the Future of Streaming?
The future of streaming is all about revenue generation for the studios and streaming companies. Besides executing different methods for enticing users, like personalized recommendations and user-friendly interface, streamers are also pushing ad-supported plans to lower their starting prices and increase their revenue. While many people might end up leaning into these initiatives, others might want advanced versions of an ad-block extension to steer away from them.
With this overview of streaming, you may get a better insight on the past, present, and future of streaming. This could help you appreciate how far streaming technology has come in the past few years and where it could go from here.
