Starting July 1, 2026, streaming services in California will have to follow the same rules about loud commercials that regular TV and cable have followed for over a decade. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law, called SB 576, in October 2025.

The rule is simple: ads cannot be louder than the show you're watching. If you've ever jumped at a commercial that suddenly blared much louder than the program, you know why this matters.

Broadcasters and cable companies have been required to follow this rule since 2012, under a federal law called the CALM Act. They built special equipment into their systems to measure and control how loud ads are compared to the surrounding program. Streaming platforms — Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and others — never had to follow the same rule. That loophole has lasted since streaming ads became popular in the early 2020s.

Because California has so many viewers and splitting audio streams by state is technically difficult, most major streaming platforms will probably just follow these rules nationwide rather than create separate versions for California. This has happened before: California's environmental and privacy rules often end up becoming the standard across the country.

Implementing the change is more complicated for streaming platforms than it was for traditional TV. Broadcast systems have hardware that sits at a central control point, making it easy to check and adjust audio levels. Streaming platforms pull advertisements from many different sources — ad exchanges, direct sales agreements, and network deals — and deliver them in different ways. Some platforms insert ads on their servers before sending the stream to your device; others send the ad directly to your device and let it play. Either way, they'll need to build systems to measure and normalize how loud ads are, without affecting the surrounding content.

The law doesn't have a dedicated regulator checking compliance, the way broadcast television does. Instead, California's attorney general and individual consumers can file complaints if they believe a platform is breaking the rule. How strictly this gets enforced in practice will likely influence whether other states pass similar laws.

Streaming is now how most people watch video content. As that has become the norm, rules and regulations are starting to catch up to what traditional broadcasting had for years. Loudness is one issue. Questions about how ads are disclosed, how personal data is used, and how ads are shown to children are all being debated in state legislatures. This California law is one piece of that larger puzzle.

For the engineers and ad teams running these platforms, the July 1 deadline is real.