Mocs News Reporting the news that matters most to UTC
By Chris Milligan
Chattanooga, TN (mocsnews.com) – As the world slowly adjusts to the impact of COVID-19, many places in the world have instructed social distancing, staying six feet apart from one another, or issued stay-at-home orders, only going out when it is absolutely needed. This has left people turning to streaming services to cure their boredom while stuck at home. But what does this mean for the streaming services or the people that stream their own content? To answer these questions, first let’s look at what streaming is and some of the commonly used services.
According to Cloudflare.com, streaming is a continuous transmission of files from a server to a client that happens in real-time. This means you can watch or listen to almost anything if you have an Internet capable device.
Streaming services started gaining popularity around the early 2000’s with only a few hundred thousand subscribers and only offering TV shows and movies. Now, in 2020, billions of people have a subscription to either Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus or Twitch, each offering their own form of uniqueness.
So, what kind of impact has COVID done to streaming? In the last few months TV and Movie streaming companies have seen a 32% increase in subscriptions, according to marketwatch.com. Even Twitch streamers, people who stream video game content, have seen a 10% increase in the amount of people watching them.
For Dillon Bartlett, a local resident to the Chattanooga area and Twitch streamer, he isn’t looking to make money or having a large fan base from streaming. He enjoys building connections with people that love to play video games just as much as him.
“Before COVID, I would only have about five people watch my stream. Now I’ve got about 20 to 30 people watching me, which is not as much as some of the big-time streamers out there,” said Dillon. “For me, it’s not about having a bunch of viewers really, I enjoy giving something for the people to watch and to be able to interact with them.”
Whether you’re a subscriber or streaming your own content, streaming services has helped cured our boredom in some way. And in some ways, we are still able to connect and build friendships with people while staying at a safe distance.
