Media & Entertainment Software Development

Challenges in media & entertainment software

• Audiences spread across web, mobile, smart TVs and social platforms
• Subscription and advertising revenue that is hard to grow and measure
• Content workflows held together with spreadsheets and shared drives
• Video playback that buffers or breaks on some devices
• Rights, licensing windows and takedown requests tracked manually

Software we build for media & entertainment

Compliance and security

We build the technical controls these rules require and work with your compliance and legal advisers, who confirm obligations.

Systems we integrate with

Build vs buy for streaming

Most streaming products should not build their own video encoding, storage and delivery. Specialist video platforms handle transcoding, adaptive bitrate streaming, DRM and global CDN delivery reliably and at predictable cost. Where custom development pays off is the layer your audience actually experiences: the apps, discovery and personalisation, subscriptions and entitlements, and the integrations with your content and ad systems.

Connected TV and multi-device delivery

Connected TV platforms — Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV/Google TV, Samsung and LG — each have their own SDKs, review processes and remote-control navigation rules. We share business logic and APIs across platforms, design for ten-foot interfaces and focus states, and test playback on real devices, because emulators rarely show the buffering and memory issues viewers hit.

A single entitlements service keeps a subscriber’s access consistent whether they signed up on the web, an app store or a TV.

Subscriptions, ads or both

Revenue model decisions shape the product as much as the content does. Subscription businesses need frictionless sign-up, entitlements that work across every device, and retention tools such as pause, plan downgrades and win-back offers. Advertising businesses need accurate measurement, ad insertion that does not damage playback, and consent management that keeps targeting lawful. Hybrid models — a free ad-supported tier and a paid ad-free tier — need both, plus clear rules about which content each tier unlocks.

We help you model the flows before build, so pricing experiments later do not require re-architecting the platform.

Content operations behind the scenes

Audiences see apps; teams live in the workflows that feed them. We build editorial and operations tools that track every asset from ingest to publication: metadata entry with controlled vocabularies, artwork in all the sizes each platform needs, captions and subtitles, rights windows by territory, and scheduling across apps and FAST channels. When a licence expires, content is withdrawn automatically everywhere it appears. Clear dashboards show what is live, what is scheduled and what is missing before it causes a problem.

A reference architecture for a media platform

Whether the product is a streaming service, a publisher’s site or a fan app, the same building blocks recur. Keeping them separate lets each one scale and change independently — the paywall can change without touching the video pipeline, and a new TV app can reuse the same APIs as the website.

See also video streaming platforms and headless websites.

Walkthrough: adding a membership tier to a publisher site

1. Decide the model1–2 weeks

   Metered paywall, hard paywall or members-only extras; which content is free and which is premium.

2. Design accounts and entitlements1–2 weeks

   How readers sign up, which plans exist, how gifts, trials and group subscriptions work.

3. Integrate billing and the CMS4–6 weeks

   Connect payment provider webhooks to entitlements; tag content in the CMS as free or premium.

4. Protect SEO and sharing1–2 weeks

   Use structured data for paywalled content so search engines understand it; keep share previews working.

5. Launch, measure, iterateOngoing

   Track conversion, churn and cancellation reasons; test offers and onboarding emails.

Durations are typical for an existing site with a modern CMS.

Build or buy beyond video

Common mistakes and questions to settle first

• Licensing content without recording territories and windows in a system the app can check
• Building every TV platform at once instead of starting with the ones your audience uses
• Locking premium content behind a paywall in a way that blocks search engines from understanding it
• Forgetting captions and audio description until late in the project
• Running separate account systems for web, apps and newsletters

Before starting, settle: Where do your audiences actually watch or read? Which revenue model matters most in year one? What rights restrictions apply to the catalogue? Which teams will run editorial operations, and what tools do they already know?

Audience data, privacy and personalisation

Personalisation can lift engagement — continue-watching rows, newsletters tuned to interests, recommendations for the next episode — but it depends on data that audiences and regulators increasingly scrutinise. A good design collects only what personalisation needs, records consent clearly and gives people control over their profiles and history.

Products that may attract children need particular care. If a service is directed at children under 13, or knowingly collects their data, COPPA applies in the United States, with requirements for parental consent and limits on data use. Many media companies choose to keep under-13 experiences separate, with minimal data collection and no behavioural advertising. We design account, profile and consent flows with your legal advisers so that the product works well and stays within the rules that apply to it.

• Separate profiles within one account, including kids profiles
• Consent records linked to each marketing and analytics use
• Clear viewing and reading history controls
• Server-side analytics that limit third-party tracking

Planning for launch-day traffic

Media traffic is spiky: a premiere, a breaking story or a live event can multiply normal load within minutes. Video itself is served by the CDN, but sign-in, entitlement checks, catalogue APIs and payment flows still hit your servers. We load-test these paths against realistic peak scenarios, cache catalogue responses at the edge, queue non-urgent work such as analytics and email, and agree a runbook for event day — who watches which dashboards, and which features can be switched off to protect playback if needed.

Audience and revenue metrics for media platforms

Illustrative metrics; which ones matter depends on your organisation and goals.

Media technology glossary

Agreeing on these terms up front matters because rights, revenue and reporting rules usually differ for each model and each distribution partner.

Services for this industry

Related: subscription platforms, headless websites, mobile apps and data analytics.

Explore more in Industry Software Development for the Sectors We Serve.