The 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, one of the largest musical events in Europe, set new records this year for both the European Broadcasting Union and Octoshape. Millions of users visited the Eurovision website and the online webcast also saw a major rise in popularity.

I have to admit that I was actually one of those users. If you've ever lived in Europe for any amount of time, you've probably been there during the annual Eurovision Song Contest. To say the least, a lot of people go crazy over this event and some cities even put up large screens to watch it with a crowd. While it's not always the best music, the shows, commentating, and voting are very entertaining.

When I saw it was being streamed online this year, I couldn't help but tune in but the experience was not the same. They didn't have any commentating, nor did you see how countries were voting. That took away some of the entertainment.

In Octoshape's experience, webcasts from high profile events like the ESC are watched like traditional television broadcasts. With an estimated average of 2.5 viewers per stream and more than 400,000 sessions, the ESC 2007 webcast could have reached approximately a quarter million people. In addition the vast majority of users were tuned in for the entire event.

Having successfully streamed in high quality from the ESC 2006, the Junior ESC 2006 and now the ESC 2007, Octoshape has repeatedly proved itself as a viable solution for large scale high quality webcasts.

With more than 24% of the total user hours consumed by users from the US, it's obvious that the event is extending beyond European borders. With no broadcasters airing the event in most countries outside Europe, users were delighted with the TV-quality feed from Octoshape. ESC-TV - the Eurovision Song Contest channel - was available to users worldwide in high quality at 700 Kbits/s.