Streaming Across Media examines the rise of streaming as the dominant means through which cultural content is distributed, accessed, and consumed.
Extending across music, film, television, video games, audiobooks, ebooks, and social media, streaming has become a defining feature of contemporary media culture. As different forms of content increasingly appear on the same platforms, traditional boundaries between media industries are becoming less distinct. The book explores streaming as a broader technological, economic, and cultural phenomenon that is reshaping media industries, audience practices, and patterns of cultural consumption.
The book develops a comparative framework for understanding streaming across multiple media sectors. It examines the technologies, business models, and user practices that underpin streaming services, drawing on examples from cultural industries around the world. Particular attention is given to the ways streaming platforms organize access to content and create conditions of abundance, two characteristics that have become central to contemporary media consumption.
A central theme is the shift from ownership to access as the organizing principle of cultural participation. The book considers how audiences increasingly engage with media through ongoing relationships with platforms rather than through ownership of physical or digital objects, and explores the implications of this transition for cultural value, memory, creative labor, and industry organization.
Combining insights from media studies, platform studies, and media industries research, the book situates streaming within longer histories of media distribution, infrastructure, and technological change. It also examines the new genres, markets, and industries enabled by streaming platforms and considers emerging developments, including generative artificial intelligence, that are shaping the future of streaming.
International in scope, the book addresses both global platforms and regional services, highlighting the different ways streaming is adopted, adapted, and regulated across cultural contexts. It will interest students, researchers, librarians, and professionals working in media, communication, digital culture, publishing, and the creative industries. Suitable for advanced undergraduate, postgraduate, and specialist academic collections, it provides an accessible overview of streaming’s role in contemporary cultural life.
