Ultimate streaming experience Archives

Over the past five years, Ustream went from a lone pioneer in the mobile live video space to the leader in an industry that became a cultural phenomena. Live video broadcast from, and to, mobile devices is literally changing the way people and companies communicate.

Last year alone, Ustream delivered over 75 million mobile live broadcasts, making it the most powerful, robust and scalable mobile live video platform in the world.  Now everyone has a satellite truck in his or her pocket.

Recently, a couple startups have generated a lot of attention around the idea that consumers can share live video on Twitter, leading to speculation that this capability might lead to new behaviors in content sharing for both consumers and companies. We wholeheartedly agree. In fact, we’ve been enabling the changing communications tide for some time:

• Beginning 2010 and into 2011, more than 5 million viewed the Arab Spring democratic uprisings,
• In 2011, 50 million viewers witnessed and communicated via Ustream during the Japan earthquake,
• In 2011, a single citizen broadcast the Occupy Movement for 48 hours to more than 2 million viewers, earning him Time Magazine’s Person of the Year,
• In 2012, anti-Putin protests broadcast to more than 8 million viewers caused Russia to attack Ustream, and
• In 2014, citizens of Ukraine broadcast the uprising there to more than 10 million viewers.

To meet the needs of companies who want to leverage this behavior shift, we built a powerful set of APIs that allow anyone to create applications that stream live video from mobile devices.

Very soon, we’ll be announcing an addition to our APIs that makes it trivially easy for anyone to create countless variations on the Meerkat concept to leverage mobile devices and live video to communicate in new and creative ways, while leveraging social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, to share their messages.

To accelerate the development of these applications, Ustream is opening its live mobile broadcasting SDK and APIs to the public. Previously available only to Ustream internal developers, the SDK will allow any company to build a Meerkat-like or other creative live video solution and leverage Ustream’s live video platform for immediate scalability. The APIs and SDK will be free for developers to use to create and test their applications.

Soon, any company will be able use Ustream’s simple SDK to harness the communication power of live video, the ubiquity of mobile devices and the unmatched scalability of Ustream’s platform to market their brands or even communicate corporate direction internally. By bringing to market the ability to ‘build your own’ mobile streaming app, communications from brands, media companies and consumers can co-mingle for the ultimate streaming content experience. Whether it’s sports fans in the stands at a NASCAR race, participants in a triathlon streaming from a GoPro, or attendees at a major keynote at a trade show, more than ever brands and media companies will be able to share live experiences from the viewpoint of the consumer.

In addition to basic video sharing, Ustream is adding powerful enterprise class features like security, eCDN and SSO to deliver true business-ready capabilities. At Ustream, we believe that all companies will be media companies. Our goal is to help them unlock their creative potential with live video.

Developers interested in early access to the SDK should visit our landing page: https://video.ibm.com/platform/live-broadcasting-sdk

Unique fan-focused service comes to BluOS enabled products via previously announced adaptive streaming protocol.

PICKERING, CANADA, MAY 26, 2020 – Lenbrook International, developer of the BluOS hi-res wireless premium distributed audio and music management platform, proudly announced the integration of the Neil Young Archives (NYA), the high-resolution, studio-quality streaming online archive of famed Canadian-born rock icon, Neil Young, into the BluOS platform.

Effective immediately, Canada- and US- based users of BluOS Enabled products from NAD Electronics, Bluesound, and DALI Loudspeakers, will be prompted to update their players for the unique opportunity to freely sample Neil Young Archives’ “Song of the Day” and “Album of the Week” in high-resolution, with a tap of a button in the BluOS Controller app. Existing subscribers of the Neil Young Archives can simply enter their credentials into the “Add Music” area of the BluOS app to access the service, and those who wish to become a subscriber will find a link to the sign-up page on NYA’s website.

This integration is possible due to the addition of OraStream’s adaptive streaming protocol utilizing the MPEG 4 SLS codec in BluOS, introduced late last year as part of BluOS’s goal to maintain its leadership in offering high-resolution music content options for its users. Music files are encoded and delivered in their native resolution, thereby retaining and preserving the nuances and details of the original source file.

ALL-CANADIAN COMMITMENT TO HIGH-RESOLUTION AUDIO

In 2018, Canadian-born Young launched his Neil Young Archives, an ambitious project that models a novel way for artists to distribute unique content to their fans without the damaging compression so prevalent in today’s mass market streaming music world. His website and app provide access to all of his audio, video, memorabilia, notes, lyrics, original manuscripts, and news.

Meanwhile, Canada-based Lenbrook International was in the midst of growing its reach with a new and modern audiophile customer seeking a completely new performance standard and user experience supporting high-resolution 24/192 audio streaming, layered with multi-room music capabilities. Such an innovative solution had never before been made commercially available and the Bluesound brand, with its BluOS operating system, had been setting new standards and winning awards worldwide since its launch in 2012.

This “Canadian connection” around high-resolution audio has been developing over a number of years, with Young even mentioning Lenbrook as an example of hardware manufacturers who remain dedicated to hi-res audio in his 2019 book co-written with Phil Baker, “To Feel the Music.”

“Perhaps an underappreciated point for those who want to experience hi-res audio is that it takes two elements working together to achieve the optimal outcome,” explains Gordon Simmonds, President and CEO of the Lenbrook Group of Companies. ”Hi-res audio is only possible when both the content is offered in hi-res and the audio equipment that music lovers use can decode that content in its highest quality. In this integration, we have put these two pieces together for the end consumer to enjoy, simply and elegantly.”

A CONTENT AND HARDWARE PARTNERSHIP TO MODEL

Beyond just the technical integration of Young’s service with BluOS, the agreement also demonstrates how a content creator and a home audio equipment provider can collaborate and model an effective and simple solution for music lovers to access and enjoy a unique and fully high-resolution streaming experience.

“It is important to me to be able to offer my life’s work to music lovers in its highest resolution. I want them to experience my music in the absolute best quality possible on their devices,” says Young. “Creating Neil Young Archives has enabled me to support and partner with established hi-res audio brands using BluOS to achieve great improvement over mainstream consumer devices and bring the true beauty of music to you.”

“Although my music already sounds better on all devices because our master’s high-resolution source is so pure,” Young continues, “to reach its true potential, it will sound even better with BluOS Enabled products!”

“This is how the hi-res masters enable the very best quality for all music lovers, combining the best source with superior playback of devices using BluOS, designed to provide all the music and easily unwraps the true emotional hit from my hi-res music.”

ABOUT THE NEIL YOUNG ARCHIVES

The Neil Young Archives (neilyoungarchives.com), described as a “Revolution in fandom” by The Guardian, is a website and app where fans have access to Neil Young’s audio, video, memorabilia, notes, lyrics, original manuscripts and an eight-page newspaper. It’s where Neil is continually adding new content and where his fans and he communicate with each other. It went live a little over a year ago and has tens of thousands of paid members. A subscription costs $19.99 per year.

ABOUT BLUOS

BluOS™ is a premium multi-room audio ecosystem that manages stored and cloud music sources and playback, with support for high-resolution audio streams up to 24/192. Adopted by some of the most renowned hifi audio brands and integrated with numerous smarthome and voice control systems, BluOS allows for interoperability among enabled devices across brands for maximum versatility and use cases. Integrations with popular streaming music services like Tidal, Spotify, Amazon Music HD, Qobuz, and Deezer, as well as featuring support for FLAC, WAV, OraStream, MQA, and other high-resolution formats and codecs, BluOS offers virtually unlimited access to music of all genres for any occasion. Made up of an operating system and a control application for smart phones, tablets, and PC desktops, BluOS is the ultimate choice for the modern audiophile.

ABOUT LENBROOK INTERNATIONAL

Lenbrook International, a subsidiary of the Lenbrook Group of Companies, is the owner and manufacturer of award-winning brands for home audio and residential install applications. Its full suite of products from NAD Electronics, PSB Speakers, Bluesound wireless multi-room players, and Bluesound Professional commercial audio, are distributed in over 80 countries, while its BluOS hi-res distributed audio platform continues to be adopted by some of the world’s leading premium audio brands.

CONTACTS

Corporate Contact

June Ip
Marketing, Lenbrook International
jip@lenbrook.com

US Media Relations

Peter Hoagland
PR Consultant
peter@hoagland.us

UK Media Relations

Steve Dalton
PR Consultant
steve@olexcommunications.co.uk

LINKS

The Neil Young Archives: www.neilyoungarchives.com

BluOS: www.bluos.net

Lenbrook Group: www.lenbrook.com