JW Player

Last updated
JW Player
Company type Private
Founded2005;20 years ago (2005)
FounderJeroen Wijering
Headquarters New York City, New York
Website jwplayer.com

JW Player is a New York based company that has developed video player software of the same name. [1] The player, for embedding videos onto web pages, is used by news, video hosting companies, and for self-hosted web videos. The company has also created the video management software "JW Platform", formerly known as "Bits On The Run". [2]

Contents

History

JW Player was developed in 2005, initially as an open-source project. [2] In December 2015, JW Player stated that their software is no longer offered with an open-source license; instead it is offered with a Creative Commons license for non-commercial use. [3] [4] The software is named after the founder and initial developer Jeroen Wijering. [5] It initially was distributed via Wijering's blog. In about 2007 it was integrated into the advertising company named LongTail, which was renamed after the software in 2013. In 2008 a company, headquartered in New York, was formed which continued to develop and distribute the player. [6]

During the early development, before it was purchased by Google, YouTube videos were streamed by JW Player. [7] [8] In 2015, JW Player was rewritten to reduce size and load time. Version 7 was licensed under the proprietary Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. It had integrated support for HTML video and Flash Video, [9] allowing video to be watched on phones, tablets and computers. That year the company's paying customer base grew by more than 40 percent to 15,000, 60% from the USA. 2.5 million websites used the free edition, playing about a billion videos per month. [9] [10]

In 2016, the company released a new simpler-to-use version of its product, entitled JW Showcase. [8] JW Player continues to be used by many companies, including ESPN, [7] Electronic Arts, and AT&T.

In October 2024, JW Player and Connatix announced their merger, JWP Connatix. [11]

Acquisitions

JW Player acquired VUALTO in May 2021. [12] In 2023, London, UK-based company InPlayer was purchased for an undisclosed amount. [13]

Features and licensing

JW Player is proprietary software. There is a basic free of cost version distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-SA) [14] license in which videos are displayed with an overlaid company watermark, and a commercial 'software as a service' version.

JW Player supports MPEG-DASH (only in paid version), Digital rights management (DRM) (in collaboration with Vualto), interactive advertisement, and customization of the interface through Cascading Style Sheets. [9]

References

  1. ↑ Cheredar, Tom (17 September 2014). "With $20M, JW Player wants video publishers to look past YouTube". VentureBeat. Retrieved 14 April 2015.
  2. 1 2 Ryan Lawler, 24. October 2013: LongTail Video Rebrands As JW Player Because That’s What Customers Know Them For. Archived.
  3. ↑ Walch, Rob (2015-12-22). "Software License". GitHub . Archived from the original on 2020-11-18.
  4. ↑ Walch, Rob (2020-12-22). "Please remove "open source" from README.md". GitHub . Archived from the original on 2020-11-18.
  5. ↑ Jocelyn Johnson (VideoInk), 18. January 2016: 5Qs with JW Player’s Jeroen Wijering and Chris Mahl
  6. ↑ "JW Player Raises $20M To Help Video Publishers Look Beyond YouTube". Tech Crunch, Sep 17, 2014 by Anthony Ha
  7. 1 2 "How JW Player became the largest video player behind YouTube and Facebook". The Drum, 7 August 2015 by Natan Edelsburg
  8. 1 2 "JW Player’s New “JW Showcase” Further Enables DIY Streaming Services". VideoInk Jocelyn Johnson | Aug 23, 2016
  9. 1 2 3 Troy Dreier (Streaming Media Magazine), 13. August 2015: JW Player 7 Released, With DASH Support and Speed Improvements
  10. ↑ Anthony Ha (TechCrunch), 5. January 2016: JW Player Raises $20M To Expand Its Video Platform
  11. ↑ Cross-Kovoor, Tim (2024-10-09). "JW Player and Connatix Announce Merger". VideoWeek. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  12. ↑ Michael Balderston (2021-05-06). "JW Player Acquires Streaming, DRM Provider VUALTO". TVTechnology. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  13. ↑ FinSMEs (2023-01-19). "JW Player Buys InPlayer". FinSMEs. Retrieved 2024-12-06.
  14. ↑ "license specification of non-commercial version, Github". GitHub .
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