Biographical Information

Articles for Dom Robinson

The Economics of Music: Streaming vs. CD Sales—A Deeper Look

In recent years, a narrative has emerged pitting streaming services against traditional music sales, particularly CDs and vinyl. Social media posts often circulate claiming that a single CD sale is worth hundreds of hours of streaming for an artist. While these comparisons can be eye-catching, they often oversimplify a complex ecosystem and misdirect artists' frustrations. This article aims to unpack the intricacies of music royalties, challenging common misconceptions and highlighting the real issues at play.

Dom Robinson Talks Streaming Sustainability and the LESS Accord

Streaming Media's Tim Siglin sits down with Greening of Streaming Founder Dom Robinson to discuss streaming sustainability and the LESS Accord in this exclusive interview from Streaming Media East 2023.

Preserving Our Intergenerational Legacy (or Streaming Media's Feet of Clay)

So considering streaming, file transfer, or even leaving the long tail simply unused and archived as the storage media changes around it over years, there's much to think about for anyone wanting to leave a video as an intergenerational legacy.

id3as' Dom Robinson and Help Me Stream's Tim Siglin Talk Greening of Streaming

id3as' Dom Robinson and Help Me Stream's Tim Siglin discuss the latest Greening of Streaming developments--including taking the conservation case to Parliament--in this interview from Streaming Media East 2022.

Sustainability, Streaming, and the Data Attribution Challenge

"Sustainability" is perhaps the most important buzzword in the streaming industry, but most current efforts to define "green" or "net zero" streaming miss the target.

The Streaming Industry's Stellar 2021 Opens the Door to an Even Better 2022

We'll see even more of the innovation—both technical and cultural—that we've seen over the past year, but temper your excitement with a healthy dose of skepticism about Web3.

Where Are the Women in the Streaming Media Industry?

A look at any conference program—including our own—makes it clear: It's long past time for the streaming media industry to take the gender imbalance seriously, and to identify and address the root issues—not just the optics.

The Greening of Streaming, One Year On

From an article in Streaming Media a year ago has grown a brand-new organization devoted to meeting the sustainability challenge in the streaming industry.

ttconv Simplifies Subtitling and Captioning

Thanks to ttconv, a new format converter, adding timed text to video is becoming simpler and more efficient, and Facebook is already embracing it

How to License Music for Streaming

Want to stream music online? Be prepared to deal with a labyrinth of licensing regulations. Here's an overview of music licensing for streaming, and scenarios to help you figure out what you need to do.

Don't Believe the 5G Streaming Video Hype

5G holds promise for smart cities, smart vehicles, and industrial automation. For video streaming? Not so much.

The Greening of Streaming

The time has long since passed to turn our attention to making the streaming delivery ecosystem more environmentally friendly. Here are some of the key challenges, as well as some suggested first steps towards solutions.

Preview: Content Delivery Summit 2020

Content Delivery Summit Chair Dom Robinson previews Content Delivery Summit 2020, the leading conference for CDN, edge delivery, and distributed computing, which Streaming Media is hosting as a free full-day webinar on June 1.

It's Time to Make Streaming Greener

The online video industry has yet to reckon with the energy demands and environmental impact of what we do. It's time to start the discussion and work towards the greening of streaming.

Can Virtual Events Match the Real Thing?

As conferences around the world are canceled or postponed due to COVID-19, it's time to give virtual event platforms a closer look. You might be surprised at how immersive they've become.

How to Speak at Content Delivery Summit 2020

The event brings together all the players in the content delivery sector—from power and interconnect to quality of service and edge compute—in the only conference of its kind. If you're interested in speaking, read on.

Disney, CBS, Akamai, Microsoft and More Speaking at Content Delivery Summit

This year's event next week features presentations and fireside chats from leading players in the world of content delivery, from the CDNs themselves to the broadcasters and content owners that use them.

Struggling With Capacity and Congestion in the Digital Video Age

Can the internet keep up with the ballooning demands video is placing on it? And how can planners manage growth while keeping costs down? The correct answers are not always the obvious ones in this hall of mirrors.

25 Years of Internet Radio, Part 2

Back when online video was the size of a postage stamp, audio companies were changing the way the world heard radio. Here are reminiscences from RealNetworks and other pioneers.

25 Years of Internet Radio: Part 1

Can you believe it's been a quarter of a century since the first internet radio broadcast? In this first installment of a two-part series, we talk to some of the trailblazers who started a revolution.

OTT Moves Toward Microservices as Speed Becomes an Issue

Microservices architectures are central to the growth of OTT services, but they're widely misunderstood. Here's an intro to the major players.

DIY: Live Audio Streaming Using Icecast with FFmpeg

Building on previous DIY articles, this installment will walk you through capturing audio, encoding and packaging with FFmpeg, then playing out through the Icecast server you set up in the last article

Hey, Streaming Industry: Fix This!

In which our resident crank opens his craw, unleashes the italics, and goes to town on problems with the cord-cutting experience, why industry pundits lie about latency, and what's wrong with advertising (hint: everything)

DIY: Icecast Internet Radio Server

In the latest installment of our do-it-yourself series, we'll look at how to set up an Icecast server on an AWS cloud instance.

DIY: Rudimentary Audio Streaming

For the second installment in our do-it-yourself series, we look at how to set up a very basic audio stream between two computers on the same LAN. While the coding is simple, the concepts underneath are crucial to an understanding of how streaming works.

DIY: Streaming to Multiple Destinations

Want to stream to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch, but don't need a commercial streaming service and don't mind doing a bit of coding? Read on!

Streaming Forum Preview: Broadcaster Streaming Strategies

Hear speakers from Sky, BT, and CenturyLink discuss their organisations' approaches to OTT technologies, including virtualisation, containerisation, micro services, and encoding, as well as their overarching strategies for reaching multiple devices and audiences.

Commentary: It's Not AV1 vs. HEVC

With Apple joining the Alliance for Open Media, there's been a lot of talk about AV1 vs. HEVC. But we no longer live in an either/or world, and can now give viewers what they want with minimal cost and effort compared to years gone by.

MP3: The End of the Beginning, or a New Dawn?

MP3 may be the VHS to other audio formats' better-quality Betamax, but it's here to stay, especially now that the format is royalty-free.

CDN Market Pricing Down, but Overall Growth Continues

At last week's Content Delivery Summit, Dan Rayburn presented his annual survey of pricing and trends in the industry. Per-GB prices are down, but CDNs are making up for the drop with increased efficiencies and value-added services

Commentary: Pointing Fingers in the Wrong Direction After AWS Outage

Sites and services that went down when an Amazon Web Services region failed shouldn't blame Amazon. They should blame their own poorly architected cloud infrastructure.

Review: DJI Inspire 2 with Zenmuse X5S Camera

The DJI Inspire 2 sets a new bar for drones, and the Zenmuse X5S camera is on par with much pricier models. It might be overkill for live streaming, but combined with the drone and DJI's gimbals, it's well worth the price.

Service Velocity Taking Hold in the Online Video Space

We've moved from dedicated hardware to virtualized appliances, but a new approach to service velocity promises even faster ways to spin up new OTT services and bring them to market

The Return of Multicast: Why it Succeeds in a Live Linear World

Multicast isn't new, but CDNs, operators, and content publishers have finally caught up to the possibilities it offers for increased scale and decreased costs.

SDN and NFV: The Future of Virtualization and Cloud Computing

With software-defined networking and network function virtualization, the SaaS providers of today may soon find themselves adapting to more robust virtualization solutions. Here's a primer explaining how and why.

How to Shoot Aerial Video Using Drones and Quadcopters

Ready to get a bird's-eye view with an airborne camera? Here is a list of drone dos and don'ts from an experienced aerial videographer.

Buyer’s Guide to Content Delivery Networks 2015

CDN-hunters, read this first for an explanation of the basic key performance indicators to explore in order to make the right choice for any size company.

How to Maximize the Reliability of a Cellular Bonding Solution

Cellmux technology is now an essential part of many video operations, but connections aren't always reliable. Here's how to ensure strong uptime and throughput.

Mushroom Networks’ Streamer Powers an Industry-First Live Video Broadcast using iOS Devices

Live broadcast from Cine Gear Expo used iPads as sources for both live and pre-produced content, all switched onsite and delivered using the Mushroom Networks Streamer 8000

OTT Delivery: Creating Strategies for Video Streaming

The term "OTT" is used for many types of video delivery. Here are the different OTT workflow models, and the various ways they bring videos to viewers.

A Buyer’s Guide to Content Delivery Networks

CDNs aren't what they used to be. Here's what you need to know as you select one (or more) to deliver your content.

A Buyer’s Guide to Backhaul

Whether you call it backhaul or contribution feed, getting a signal to a studio or CDN is a key step in the streaming delivery chain. Here's a look at the options.

A Buyer's Guide to Cellular Multiplexers 2014

The cellmux vendor universe is expanding, but a careful needs assessment can lead you to the right solution for your company.

Creating NASDAQ’s Cloud-Based Virtual Workflow

How one late-night brainstorming session turned into a more efficient workflow with tremendous cost savings.

A Buyer's Guide to Cellular Multiplexers

Forget the sexy form factor and look deep inside the technology. Here are the three questions to ask before buying a cellmux.

A Buyer's Guide to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Where have all the CDNs gone? None of the most prominent CDNs want to be thought of as CDNs anymore. What does that mean for buyers or for the industry?

Reliable UDP (RUDP): The Next Big Streaming Protocol?

New so-called reliable UDP solutions offer an alternative to TCP. But are they worth the time or money to implement?

WCIT-12: The End to the Internet as We Know It?

ACTA and SOPA may be dead, but proposed changes to the Internet Telecommunications Regulation pose an even bigger threat to a free and open internet

Buyer's Guide: Content Delivery Networks

No one said choosing a CDN is easy, so here's a guide to the decision-making process. Don't miss our giant CDN flow chart.

Buyer's Guide: CellMux, Link-Aggregator, and Channel-Bond Devices

What to look for in cellular multiplexing devices -- perhaps the fastest growing streaming technology.

CDN Federation: A Badly-Defined Solution in Search of a Real Problem?

At last year's Content Delivery Summit Europe, there was serious interest in exploring the CDN federation model. Further investigation, however, reveals that the notion was more down to marketing and sales than engineering

Teradek Bond: Review

Yet another entrant in the "cellular multiplexer" field, the Teradek Bond offers reliable, good-quality streaming over cellular networks for a reasonable price

Wired 2011: Where's the Video?

The tech glitterati spent day one talking about social networking, biotech, and even 3D printing, but not video. Perhaps the online video industry has gotten so good that the influencers haven't noticed how much they've been influenced?

Wired 2011: The Next Generation of Facial Recognition

Face.com's facial recognition technology is at once amazing and scary. Are you ready for your close-up?

iOS 5 and iCloud Are Great, But What About Video?

iCloud is more than just Apple's entry into the world of cloud computing; it essentially means Apple is acting as a CDN. But if that function is going to expand to streaming video delivery, it's going to strain the network in ways that Apple's not ready for.

YouTube: A Peek Inside

YouTube's European engineering director Oliver Heckmann will keynote Streaming Media Europe in London in October, and he offered us a preview of his behind-the-scenes talk

LiveU Shrinks Its Newest Model

Despite its decidedly unsexy name, the LiveU LU40i offers very exciting new capabilities, including a rich array of Layer 2 interfaces

Mushroom Networks' Portable Streamer Sends Any Video Source To a Content Delivery Network

Unlike other so-called "cellular multiplexers," the Streamer takes a video feed via Ethernet and sends to the CDN of your choice

Portable Cellular/Wi-Fi Video Broadcast Unit Review: IBIS DMNG

AVIWEST's IBIS DMNG is the latest and greatest in portable, cellular/Wi-Fi video broadcast units, and it's a terrific addition to a growing field

What if Google Didn't Drop H.264 in Chrome?

Pundits have pounced on Google for dropping H.264 support in favor of WebM in the Chrome browser. But what if an all-H.264 world isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Rackspace Teams With Akamai; Could Be Good News for Limelight

Rackspace announced last week that it is partnering with Akamai, and reports suggested it is phasing out its relationship with Limelight. That makes little sense, unless there's more behind-the-scenes deal-making going on here than meets the eye.

Commentary: BT and its Orwellian Aims to Mind Control the UK (Not)

The controversy over British Telecom's new pricing scheme goes to show that the "Net Neutrality" debate might be the most ridiculous thing since the "Millennium Bug"

Commentary: It's Time for a New Interpretation of Monetization

Now that video delivery costs are minimal, it's time to stop looking for direct ROI on every byte of video served, and for a new breed of analytics to emerge

Commentary: Flinging and Flicking

With Apple's AirPlay, users can "fling" content from their iDevices to their Apple TVs. But what happens if, instead of streaming the content from a mobile device, viewers can "flick" it to their TVs, which will then pick up the content and take over the streaming directly from the source?

Blue Coat Optimizes Video on Enterprise Networks

Dot-com boom and bust survivor Blue Coat Systems has expanded and enhanced its support for streaming video with its latest ProxySG line of products

The State of the Stack

Once-clear segments of the online video stack are blurring, with different players moving up and down

Ooyala Raises $22 Million to Accelerate Global Expansion

Investment will help the online video platform move beyond the U.S. and Europe into Asia, and brings total investment in Ooyala to $42 million

Commentary: Some Data Packets are more Equal Than Others

The debates over net neutrality show a misunderstanding of fundamental characteristics of how traffic moves on the internet.

Commentary: RIAs are the Beta Ground for Browsers

Silverlight and Flash both have a future, but publishers should be considering HTML5 as a way to step away from vendor lock-in and the player and plug-in wars.

Commentary: IPTV and its Grip on Reality

The IPTV World Forum in London was awash with set-top box and middleware manufacturers in a fool's gold rush for a market that doesn't exist.

Inside Thomson Reuters: Creating a Global Webcasting Platform

A look at the inner workings of a worldwide streaming empire.

INFORMATION SERIES #1: DRM

Big brother may be watching... Dom Robinson kicks off a 12-part guide to everything streaming with the past, present and future of Digital Rights Management.