This enables the 'stream' to be played back as quickly as possible without requiring the user to wait for a complete download. Millions of streaming media files already exist on the Web and thousands are being added every day. The question of format is a bit different, though. While a variety of streaming media formats exist, the vast majority of files has been encoded as either RealAudio, RealVideo, Windows Media Format or QuickTime. Singingfish also searches mp3s, which can exist both as streams and as downloadable files.
Live broadcasts are already a common feature on many websites.
These can include radio broadcasts, financial conference calls, newscasts, live concerts, web-cam footage, special events and more. No one has made a reliable estimate of the amount of streaming media on the Web, whether in hours of viewing time or number of streams. Real Networks estimates that every week an additional 350,000 hours of streams are encoded in Real formats, but not all of it is made available via the Web. Earlier this year, Alexa Research estimated that the amount of streaming media grows more than 10 fold every six months. Our own research shows that about ten percent of all websites host at least one streaming media file, with many portals and destination sites hosting hundreds of streams.