Why Online Video Services Can No Longer Rely on a Single DRM System

Content protection has always been a technical requirement for online video. For years, many smaller services managed with a single DRM system, usually whichever one matched their primary delivery platform. That approach worked when audiences watched on a limited set of devices and licensing agreements were less prescriptive. It no longer works. The growth of multi-device viewing, combined with increasingly specific requirements from rights holders, has made a comprehensive multi-DRM solution the baseline for any operator that wants to reach a broad audience without leaving gaps in protection or reach.

The Device Coverage Problem

Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay, and Microsoft PlayReady are the three dominant DRM technologies, and each runs natively in a different set of environments. Widevine covers Google’s ecosystem: Android devices, Chrome, Chromecast, and Android TV. FairPlay is required for iOS, macOS, and Safari. PlayReady handles Windows, Xbox, and the majority of non-Android smart TV platforms, including Samsung and LG. No single system spans all three. An operator that deploys only Widevine, for example, cannot deliver to iPhone or iPad users at all, which represents a significant and growing share of the audience for any consumer-facing platform.

Device fragmentation has accelerated as viewing habits have shifted. Viewer behaviour has long reflected this fragmentation: the device of choice shifts across the day, from mobile in the morning to connected TV in the evening, often within a single household. A platform that cannot authenticate and deliver protected video to all of them is not a realistic option for most viewers — and increasingly, not an acceptable one for most rights holders. The licensing economics only reinforce that conclusion: the more device types a service can reach, the stronger its position when negotiating distribution deals.

What Rights Holders Now Require

Rights holders, particularly studios distributing premium programming, treat multi-DRM coverage as a condition of licensing rather than a preference. A service running a single DRM cannot satisfy the requirements of licensing partners who expect Widevine, FairPlay, and PlayReady to be in place simultaneously. This constraint extends beyond studio-to-streamer relationships: sports rights, live event programming, and syndicated libraries increasingly carry the same conditions.

For operators evaluating how to meet these requirements, a centralized multi DRM solution  addresses both the compliance question and the operational one. Standards like the Common Encryption Scheme (CENC) allow a single video asset to be encrypted once and delivered to all three ecosystems W3C, Encrypted Media Extensions, with access policies — geo-restrictions, expiry windows, device limits — set once and enforced consistently. The practical overhead of managing multi-DRM is lower than most operators expect when they first evaluate the transition; the complexity lives in the initial architecture decision, not the ongoing operation.

A Strategic Decision, Not Only a Technical One

Choosing a protection strategy shapes more than security. It determines which programming a service can license, which audiences it can reach, and what happens to operational continuity when a single system encounters a problem or its license server goes down during peak viewing hours. Services that were initially built on one DRM and later needed to expand have generally found it more disruptive than starting with a broader architecture from the outset.

The industry direction is clear: multi-DRM coverage is now the assumed baseline, not a premium configuration reserved for large operators with the resources to build and maintain complex integrations. As licensing requirements become more specific and device diversity continues to grow, the case for deferring multi-DRM investment weakens further. For any online video service planning to grow its programming library or audience reach, the question is less whether to implement multi-DRM and more when to treat it as a foundational part of the delivery stack rather than an integration to retrofit when licensing demands make it unavoidable.