Streaming services

A streaming service uses the internet to deliver audio and video that plays as it arrives, rather than handing the audience a file to keep. The programme or track is only part of what reaches them.

Is it web distribution?

Streaming counts as web distribution only when the audience gets it through a browser. Someone who opens the service's site on a laptop or tablet is using the web. The same service reached by tapping an installed icon on a phone or a smart TV is distribution through an app instead. An app and a website are separate routes, so say which one the audience actually uses.

For example, an online observatory called Starline streams live telescope views. Watching it in a browser window on a laptop is web distribution; opening the Starline app on a phone is not.

What else gets distributed

Alongside the main programme, a service also distributes supporting content:

• Title images – thumbnails that catch your eye and show what each episode or track looks like.
• Text descriptions – short summaries and episode notes that help you choose something and understand it once it starts.
• Interface graphics – buttons, menus and icons you use to search, play and pause.
• Subtitles – on-screen text of the speech, which helps in a noisy room and for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing.

These assets are part of the distribution, not decoration: the audience relies on them to pick what to watch or listen to and to follow it afterwards.

So a streaming service distributes the programme or track together with the supporting content that surrounds it.