Vevo set to heighten user experience and video engagement with two digital platform launches
Music video streaming service Vevo is set to implement a new digital engagement strategy with two platform launches that will help retain the attention of its burgeoning online audiences and improve their differentiated music video viewing experiences.
New Home Vevo
The company has continued to innovate, having last year undergone a reboot of its video streaming products in an effort to become a one-stop shop for people seeking such content, which included a logo refresh and a number of new service launches.
Now the business has moved to consider how mobile and desktop usage is evolving and how the company can better use the role of influencing to evolve the music video viewing experience across the different platforms.
Stacy Moscatelli, vice president of marketing explained to The Drum the thinking that promoted the current changes: "As we went through a reboot we reviewed across all departments what we're here to do. Artists all have different needs and to be a part of their careers and development we have to look at how we help them do what they are looking to do. For artists in our Discover programmes they are looking to find their audiences but also feature the likes of Taylor Swift – so how can we fit into a one size fits all approach?"
She continued to say that artists are invited by Vevo to work with different departments in the business such as content and marketing to find solutions to aid that discovery process and need for artist's promotion of their work.
Following a period of user research, Vevo is now set to launch two projects that has had the development team hard at work over the last few months.
The first of the two new products to be released as a result of the adoption of this new strategy is the co-viewing experience, Watch Party. This will be introduced to allow users from all around the world to watch videos together, and to queue, vote and discuss videos all through the multiple screen desktop, allowing fans to share their thoughts and reactions with one another. Similar to an interactive playlist, users will be able to sync videos in order to talk about particular moments and enjoy content in real-time together.
Emojis were one element of the chat function requested by research respondents that have been added as a result.
While Watch Party will initially only be functional on desktop upon its launch in late March, a future upgrade will deliver it to mobile users too, The Drum understands.
Alongside a live chat feed, which can be hosted by users to create an experience for friends and other fans of specific artists, they will also be able to curate the video content and the order of each playlist.
Another mode will allow users to vote for their top videos, with the most popular rising to the top of the playlist, with up to 100 videos being able to be included in each queue, with user sharing offering up discovery and a party bot updating the group with the next videos set to play depending on their popularity within the group.
Vevo's second new platform, which will be released in mid-April, is an iOS only experience called New Home.
This will help drive discovery of new artists connected into more famous and established artists who have a similar sound or fanbase, Moscatelli continues.
Created around audience data, the service offers users the breadth of the Vevo catalogue alongside playlists that can be curated by each user and original content.
The playlists will be curated by the Vevo editorial team which will be made relevant to specific times or moods. Discovery of new music will be generated through an algorithm which will base its choices on previous videos watched by the user.
New Home will roll out across other platforms in time.