Article
2010s: Streaming Goes Mainstream
During the 2010s streaming moved from a niche convenience to the dominant mode of consumption for music, video and live content. Services such as Netflix expanded into original programming, Spotify normalised on-demand music subscriptions, and YouTube matured as both an entertainment platform and a career path for creators.
Key developments:
- Binge culture: Full-season releases and on-demand libraries changed how audiences consumed television and encouraged serialized, long-form storytelling.
- Music streaming & playlists: Spotify, Apple Music and other services shifted revenue models away from downloads to subscriptions and stream counts, transforming promotion and charts.
- Live & emergent forms: Twitch and YouTube Live fostered a new class of live entertainers and event formats; livestreamed concerts and interactive broadcasts experimented with direct fan monetisation. In the early 2020s the creator economy matured further: subscriptions, tipping, platform partnerships and creator funds became primary income streams for many performers, professionalising live-streamed entertainment.
- Global hits from platforms: Viral tracks and videos (often amplified by playlists and recommendation engines) crossed language borders — for example, K‑pop and Latin hits gained international traction.
Cultural Significance
- Streaming lowered barriers for niche creators and allowed subcultures to find global audiences, while simultaneously enabling platform gatekeepers and playlist editors to shape taste.
- The decentring of appointment television and radio encouraged multitasking, shorter attention spans, and the rise of highlight/recommendation-driven discovery.
- By the mid-2020s streaming platforms increasingly integrated AI features (automated captioning, recommendation tuning, synthetic voices and content-safety tools), improving accessibility while prompting debates about authorship, deepfakes and moderation.
Writing Tips
- Use platform-specific cues (a playlist, an autoplay queue, thumbnail grids) to signal time and place in the 2010s.
- Consider how on-demand access alters character rhythms: binge-watching nights, soundtrack playlists, or background livestreams at work.