Systems and methods for providing content items to users. A first content item is divided into an opening portion and a remainder portion. The opening portion begins at a chronological beginning of the first content item and ends a predetermined number of digital units from the chronological beginning of the first content item. The opening portion may be encoded according to an encoding format. The opening portion may be stored at a first remote data storage location. In response to a request for the content item from a user device, the first remote data storage location is instructed to stream the opening portion to the user device. The remainder portion may be encoded according to the encoding format and streamed to the user device.