Streaming Media Boomed in 2006

The streaming audio and video market grew substantially in 2006, but increased competition means providers are, on average, serving fewer streams to each user.

A new report from Ireland’s Research and Markets finds that the market for streaming media boomed during 2006, but that the number of streams broadband sites served to unique users every month actually dropped as online users sample media from an ever-growing number of sources.

According to the report “Streaming Media Growth and Content Category Share: 2006–2010” the number of video streams served in 2006 grew by 38.8 percent to 24.92 billion streams across entertainment nad media sites. That figure includes free and subscription-based streams, but completely omits user-generated video like YouTube. The report also finds that streaming media is increasingly converting to broadband, with an estimated 88.5 percent of all streams served in 2006 requiring 100 Kbps or more, with so-called narrowband streams (less than 100 Kbps) accounting for just 11.5 percent of streams; in 2005, narrowband streams accounted for almost a quarter (23.8 percent) of all streaming media. Music video continued to be a market leader, accounting for 35.5 percent of all streaming video usage.

One interesting offshoot of the explosion in streaming media, though, is that broadband sites are sending a lower average number of streams to unique users every month than they were in 2005: increased competition and wider availability of high-quality online music and video offering means that users seem to be willing to flit around between services, rather than increasing their usership of one or two favorites. Overall, the number of broadband streams send to unique users per month per broadband site declined to 10.6 streams in 2006, omitting video advertising streams. That’s a decline of 10.9 percent.

Research and Markets also reports that usership of Internet radio grew by 17.9 percent in 2006 to some 3.7 billion listening hours.