Arbitron reports that more than 43 million people have listened to or watched streaming media over the Net.

"Sure, a lot of that's porn, but it's still an impressive number," jokes Mark O'Brien, vice president of BIA Financial Network, a radio and television industry consultant.

The reasons behind the growth are obvious. Developing streaming media has become relatively easy and inexpensive over the past few years, and the quality itself has improved markedly since the first big trial runs by streaming giant Real Networks 10 years ago. Not surprisingly, Web-broadcasting directory BRS Media released stats earlier this year that list over 600 Internet-only radio stations broadcasting online today, and more than 3,500 traditional stations accompanying their standard broadcast with an online presence.

Showiz Inc. is betting that growth is just the beginning, an assessment about as obvious as betting the sun rises in the East. The big issue is whether the Fremont-based ASP can convince people to use its simple media streaming and hosting services when there are so many in-house alternatives to implementing streaming media on a Web site. Even in the low-end consumer market, a quick search on Download.com reveals over 100 streaming media players, and 32 shareware developer apps.

What's a Showiz to do? According to Casey Ng, VP of Corporate Development at Showiz, first you make the service really really easy. Then you make it free (for non-commercial usage). Originally launched last December, Showiz decided to release a free version of its service this week as a means of attracting a larger user base and expanding public awareness of the company.

"Our goal is to develop a very easy to use streaming audio and video platform," says Ng. "We've lowered the bar for everyone who wants to stream over the Internet."

Showiz IS easy. Registered users log on to a personal site with a simple utility for uploading any local media file. From that upload, the user specifies copyright issues, content specs, title, etc. and Showiz encodes the file (WAV, MP3, etc.) into a streaming format. Showiz also hosts the converted media, providing the user with URLs to the content, which can then be placed on the user's personal or company Web site.

Accounts are now free with Showiz for up to 10 MB of storage space and five concurrent connections to the stream. After that, the service is based on a subscription basis, determined by the number of connections and the storage space desired. Even on the subscription end, however, it is still relatively inexpensive, especially for a mid-sized company's application. A setup fee to allow 100 concurrent connections, for example, would be just under $150, with a monthly rate of roughly $80 thereafter.

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"Let's say you're a small record label that owns 20 or maybe 100 CDs," says Ng. "You obviously don't have a big budget to develop servers or hire technical personnel to manage the site. But you could outsource that element of your business to us because we only bill based on your specific level of use."

SIMPLIFYING SCALABILITY

Ng adds that the ASP model for streaming conversion and hosting is even valuable for large companies because it allows for easy growth.

"Demand in the Internet space is not predictable," he says. "But realistically, to get from, say, 100,000 users/visitors to 1 million takes over a year, if it happens at all. So you have to worry about how to scale up. In terms of our service, you just log on to your personal site and increase the subscription level. That's it."

Streamingly simple, right? But Jeremy Schwartz, senior analyst at Forrester Research, says ensuring simplicity isn't the only issue companies involved in the streaming market need to face.

"For consumers, we're still very much in a dial-up narrowband mode," says Schwartz. "As the quality of the experience goes up with greater broadband penetration, more companies will be willing to pay [for subscription services] when it comes to outsourcing streaming resources, but not until then. It just isn't a reliable enough investment yet."

Ng, however, isn't worried. He says the long-term goal of the company is to develop a brand that will put the company on the forefront of the growing broadband market.

"The name 'Showwiz'," he says, sounding like a character from an old production of Kung-Fu, "stands for your ability to create a platform to 'show' your 'wisdom.'"

Ah, Grasshopper. But lest we forget how so many Net companies come and go like ripples in the stream?