A STREAM COME TRUE

What Hi-Fi? managing editor Becky Roberts charts the extended evolution of the music streamer, from primitive pre-Spotify players to modern-day multi-taskers

It’s easy – instinctive, even – to think that music streaming, something so instrumental in the world’s consumption of music today, kicked off when Spotify gained global traction around 15 years ago. Streaming certainly kicked on as, in its formative years, the pioneering green giant found its way into over 15 million homes through its free (around 75 per cent) and paying (the rest) users, as if Lionel Messi had given the technology his biggest welly. But wireless streaming in a home audio environment had in fact been around for some time by then, albeit in a form that is largely unfamiliar today. The formative years Hints of a forthcoming streaming revolution were writ large in the early noughties. As early as 2003, Roku had released its first SoundBridge music…

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What Hi-Fi? (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2024

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