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Websites, products, technology, people, media, games, memes, slang and timeline events, all with sources.
Red envelopes, and a streaming-only plan
In 2010 Netflix was still mostly a DVD-by-mail company, but streaming was taking over: Watch Instantly worked on the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, Roku and, from August, the iPhone. Netflix launched in Canada...
The European streaming service Americans could not get
In 2010 Spotify was available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands, often by invitation, with a free ad-supported tier and a premium plan. Americans read about it...
Skype's founders try music streaming in America
Rdio, from Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, launched in the US and Canada in August 2010 as a subscription streaming service with a social feed of what friends were playing. It beat...
The little box that made Netflix streaming a habit
Roku's 2010 line, the HD, XD and XDS at $59.99 to $99.99, were the cheapest way to get Netflix Watch Instantly, Hulu Plus, Pandora and Amazon on a TV. With the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, they turned...
Any song, on demand, free, and legally doomed
Grooveshark let anyone stream almost any song on demand, free, from a slick Flash interface, because users uploaded the tracks themselves. It was hugely popular in 2010 and already being sued by the...
A $99 black puck for renting shows and streaming Netflix
The second-generation Apple TV, announced on 1 September 2010, shrank to a tiny black box with no storage, rented TV episodes for 99 cents and films from $3.99, streamed Netflix, and previewed...
The fading giant with glitter graphics and a Top 8
By 2010 MySpace had lost its crown to Facebook and was shedding users and staff under News Corp, which had bought it in 2005. In October it relaunched as a "social entertainment" site with a new...
Russia's Facebook, with a music library
VKontakte (VK) was the dominant social network across Russia and the former Soviet states in 2010. Its interface closely resembled early Facebook, but it let users upload and stream music and video...
Free TV on the web, with ads, US only
Hulu streamed current episodes of network TV shows for free with commercials, a revelation in 2010 when most television was still cable or DVD. Hulu Plus, a $9.99-a-month subscription with more...
File lockers, 72-minute limits and pirated TV
Megaupload and its video arm Megavideo were among the busiest sites on the internet in 2010, hosting everything from legitimate file transfers to full seasons of pirated television. Free viewers hit...
Type a band, get a radio station
Pandora's Music Genome Project turned any song or artist into a personalised radio station with thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. Free listening was capped at 40 hours a month in 2010, the service...
The MP3 blog aggregator
Hype Machine tracked hundreds of MP3 blogs and let you stream whatever they had just posted, with a Popular chart that could break a band. In 2010 it was the front page of the music-blog era,...
Waveforms and timed comments
SoundCloud, founded in Berlin in 2007, was becoming the place for producers and DJs to share tracks in 2010. Its orange waveform player, with comments pinned to moments in a song, was unlike anything...
Name your price
Bandcamp gave independent artists a simple page to stream and sell their music, including "name your price" downloads in any format from MP3 to FLAC. By 2010 it was quietly becoming the fairest...
Google puts Chrome on your television
Google TV launched in October 2010 on the $299 Logitech Revue set-top box and Sony televisions, promising web search and Chrome on the big screen with a full keyboard remote. The networks blocked it...
Netflix's streaming-only Canadian service at C$7.99 a month was its first international expansion and a template for the streaming-only plan it launched in the US in November.
Verified Supported Editorial Labels show how well each record is documented; open any result for its sources.
Netflix introduced its first US plan without DVDs and raised DVD-plan prices, signalling that streaming was now the main business.
Apple announced the ten-billionth song download from the iTunes Store, cementing it as the world's largest music retailer in the last years before streaming.
Hulu introduced a $9.99 subscription with full seasons and apps for the iPhone and iPad, its first step from free ad-supported TV toward paid streaming.
Blizzard's long-awaited sequel sold three million copies in a month and relaunched competitive real-time strategy and esports streaming.
