Pioneering streaming and podcast solutions provider StreamGuys has diversified the SGcontrol customer experience through a new API that allows users to create rules and customize functionality for a variety of stream management and content access control applications.

SGcontrol was introduced at the 2022 NAB Show as a managed service to offload complex stream management and access control functions from broadcasters. This new open programming environment introduces a self-management option for users who want to program and operate their own geo-targeting, geo-restriction and tokenized authorization mechanisms, for example. The new API also automates SGcontrol programming and functionality, accelerating the deployment of new streams, features and services.

“We offer many SaaS solutions to produce, manage, monetize, deliver and measure live and on-demand streaming media, and the SGcontrol managed service backed by our renowned operational support is preferred by customers without internal resources to manage access control capabilities,” said Robert Minnix, Product Manager, StreamGuys. “By unlocking the powerful features of SGcontrol through an open API, our customers now have a powerful development platform to customize their own secure control and management solutions. The self-management option also reduces the manual configuration stages that are often required at the managed service layer.”

SGcontrol simplifies media enterprises’ control of how audiences access their content, enabling broadcasters and content providers to improve their market-based monetization initiatives. Applications include geo-targeting by audience location to deliver appropriate regionalized stream variants and geo-restriction to block audience members outside defined regions from accessing content. The new API widens the use case spectrum for SGcontrol customers, including several new custom applications by broadcasters in North America and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region:

·       Music Streaming Rights: A US-based collective rights management company now uses SGcontrol to automatically redirect consumers to regional streams for more accurate royalty reporting. SGcontrol limits exposure to foreign audiences, eliminating the need to manage regional access in apps and websites while also reducing the overhead of manual reporting.

·       Sports Licensing Restrictions: A regional APAC media enterprise used SGcontrol to restrict geographical access to World Cup content. The customer created rules using SGcontrol’s powerful geo-targeting feature for streaming locally licensed content. As Minnix explains, “There is always a limited scope to who can consume the media as the license holder and rebroadcaster. SGcontrol can take an exact broadcast origin point, such as the latitude and longitude of the studio, and use a precise radius as the restriction boundary.”

Eduardo Martinez, Vice President of Technology for StreamGuys, emphasizes that SGcontrol’s benefits for regionalization spans far and wide. “Producing relevant content for diverse markets with a strong sense of branding and content cohesion from coast to coast remains a challenge,” he said. “SGcontrol’s targeting ensures that a single stream source can be repurposed across all broadcast markets, with dynamic ad insertions specific to the locale eliminating the headache of producing individual streams.”

Tokenized authorization remains a strong use case for SGcontrol, ensuring that a broadcaster’s live streams cannot be pulled into third-party or unwanted streaming platforms. Integration with StreamGuys’ proven SGpasskey functionality locks the stream, requiring a valid encrypted token for access. SGcontrol then makes authorization decisions based on information baked into the token at its time of generation, such as username and expiration time.

“Tokenization has become a favored SGcontrol application for owned and operated media companies seeking a robust access restriction solution for their live streams,” said Martinez. “Moving forward, we see the combined power of geographic targeting and SGpasskey serving as the foundation for a new premium service from StreamGuys.”