On the one hand, streaming quality has improved as network bandwidth continues to increase and viewing devices become capable of playing out at .

On the one hand, streaming quality has improved as network bandwidth continues to increase and viewing devices become capable of playing out at higher resolutions, while at the same time there are continued innovations around immersive audio, 360 degrees viewing, and the various forms of Extend Reality (XR). The BBC, as the event’s broadcaster, is charged with blending those components to deliver a compelling experience both to fans around the site seeking either to watch more distant gigs or obtain closer alternative views, and to remote streamers. The impact of continued 5G roll out around the UK will also be of interest, given that the last Glastonbury 2019 staged before the pandemic was billed as the first 5G festival by UK mobile operator EE, a subsidiary of telco BT.

Another question will be to what extent innovations in online streaming of music that were driven or accelerated by the absence of physical events during the pandemic will carry over to live coverage now such events are returning. With the long standing and ultimately deep decline in revenues from sales of their songs or productions on physical media, many musicians and bands had come to rely on live performing for the bulk of their income. It is true that some revenues could be derived from streaming via platforms such as Spotify or YouTube, but these were usually miniscule compared with proceeds from sales of CDs in the past, or vinyl records before that. Spotify typically paid under half of a cent per stream, so that an artist would earn $1 from around 250 instances and would require 5 million a year to sustain a relatively modest living.

During the pandemic though progress was made adding value to streams and there was also an acceptance by some fans that they should pay more for watching their favourite bands online just to keep them afloat. For musicians, streaming via OTT video and social media platforms was often the only way of maintaining contact with their fans. Then as social distancing rules eased, events started to make a partial come back via drive-in gigs among various inventions, supported by live streaming.

By the time Glastonbury 2022 starts on Wednesday June 22nd, there will have been a number of physical music events to serve as templates and inspirations for the broadcast and streaming coverage. It is not surprising then that the BBC has declined to give specific details of its streaming coverage until the beginning of that month.

The BBC is less concerned with more exotic innovations around XR when it comes to its Glastonbury stream available on its iPlayer portal, focusing instead on ensuring that quality is as good as it can be and available to all users throughout the festival, while hoping to regain some of its earlier reputation for being at the cutting edge of online event coverage. This reputation was established at the 2012 Olympics in London, when the BBC demonstrated almost for the first time that multiple live streams at a major event could be distributed simultaneously to large audiences at a national level, at a quality better than had been attained before at that scale, with relatively few glitches.

This was followed up at Glastonbury 2013 almost a year later, billed as the first truly digital “Glasto”. For the first time then the BBC streamed six stages of live music simultaneously back from Glastonbury for distribution to tablets, laptops, PCs and smartphones, as well as the broadcaster’s connected red button, which was then a relatively popular feature for accessing alternative content on TVs over the air.

These six stages were filmed and mixed before being sent back via satellite to the BBC’s centre at White City in London. At that stage graphics were added and quality checks performed before the signals were transmitted online to the then relatively new MediaCity UK in S...