VEVO is one of the largest sources of music videos, featuring HD videos from major artists and others that are getting a lot of buzz. The company dominates the music video space, but is absolutely worthless. The current owners (Sony, Universal, Google, Abu Dhabi Media) want to sell, but nobody really wants to buy a company that loses money.
Enter music video app Rormix, who says they are “filling up a space that VEVO has ignored“.
The app features around 3,000 curated music videos from unsigned artists. Rormix tags these videos by genre and related artists, and users can also add their own tags.
The videos are currently pulled in from YouTube, but Rormix will soon host the videos on their own servers instead.
Rormix has the ability to scan users’ iTunes libraries, using that info to recommend videos on the home feed. If you choose to sign in via Facebook, Rormix will track your liked artists that are already on the app. Users can also manually follow bands.
I wasn’t a fan of the videos at the top of my feed, but once I scrolled down I found artists that I already love and discovered new songs that I really liked.
Rormix automatically followed a few of my friends that make music, and I was pleasantly surprised to see their videos in my “following” feed.
Rormix is available on iOS and Android. The app has been downloaded over 60,000 times.
Earlier this year, Rormix received $350,000 in funding from AXM Venture Capital. They’ve also partnered with Revolt TV and have partnered with over 700 gyms in the U.K. to provide music video programming.
Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @nine_u
Any YouTube alternative is obviously interesting right now.
But a YouTube alternative that relies on… YouTube?
Well, not so much.
And yes, Rormix may be able to host the content later on. If they make a lot of money. But for now, in the real world, they don’t.
And they’re not likely to as long as they copy VEVO. We all know that VEVO’s model doesn’t work.
YouTube is a success because it hosts all sorts of content — and especially user generated content which is the stuff viral videos are made of — VEVO and Rormix are failures because they don’t.
…AND I still think the new videscape.com is much more likely to succeed because it offers everything!
Paul, if you see this, don’t you think it’s worth an article? These guys are improving the site daily.
There are still issues, though:
* Thumbnails have to be 16:9
* The player needs to be bigger
* ‘Categories’ shouldn’t be repeated below the videos
* The ‘Featured Videos’ part is too cluttered — too many videos. YouTube has a ‘show more’ function, and that’s a good solution.
* The red color will be missed when ‘BETA’ goes away and should go somewhere else (for instance to ‘Popular Categories)
* There has to be text below the thumbnails. The white overlays are interesting, and they do save space, but they’re not easy to read. They also make it hard to see the thumbnails, and they’re just not as pleasant to look at as standard bluish text links. Blue text links also contributes to the general design in a good way (a bit of red text or lines would do that to).
* You can’t get away with kicking ad-block users out. Everybody (including YouTube!) would do it if it were possible. But it isn’t. Users are hard to come by, especially in the start. Don’t keep them away if you want success. Yes, ad-blockers are annoying for site-owners — and I did read and understand Tom Oswald’s concerns — but ad-block users still drive traffic; they still pay with content and they still make videos go viral. It’s an interesting concept though, and perhaps it can be introduced later on when the service is a success. By then, users will still hate it, but not as much as a pay wall, especially if they’re warned in advance and kindly told why it’s necessary and how easy it is to make an exception for this particular site.
* It is going to have an Audio ripping feature (e.g. users can download songs for free). This is a huge mistake, and it will keep a lot of artists away. There’s just no need for it. Users who want to own the songs can buy them from iTunes (and trust me, they’ll make their own rippers soon enough).
Again, I mention these issues because I honestly think this site could become the YouTube competitor we’re longing for.
* It’s less cluttered than other potential YouTube alternatives
* It’s free
* It delivers everything. Music, comedy, sport, news, etc. This is the key to success.
* According to the owner, it will have a shop function (music/merchandise) and a Content ID-system. I’m not a big believer in future improvements, but we’ll see soon enough
* It has a good name — VIDescape.com — that it can build upon for years to come: Innocent escape, perhaps with the slightest naughty/forbidden/guilty-pleasure touch, is a highly appealing concept to a large part of the audience they want to reach.
All in all, this is the best Beta you could ask for imho (and I have absolutely zero to do with the site).
Hi there,
Thank you for this response, let me answer your comments 🙂
All of the visual features we are keen to address, I myself am not completely happy with the look of the site and we will keep adjusting until we get the right balance in this area
I have mentioned the Adblock feature before, one of the biggest issues we have today, particularly I’m the music market is people’s expectations that music should be free, I’m quite keen to teach people that this isn’t so. Since we introduced the Adblock feature we haven’t seen a noticeable drop in traffic so for now we may keep
It up, however this is a difficult decision to make and needs to be carefully monitored
The audio ripper isn’t for people to download freer music, I should phrase it better! The idea is you upload a music video and instead of having to upload a separate audio track to sell as a download the software pulls the track off the video, it’s a time saver essentially
As to future improvements, I think every site needs to continually evolve to keep up with technology and trends in the market place
Thank you for your comments and feedback though, it is hugely appreciated
“Since we introduced the Adblock feature we haven’t seen a noticeable drop in traffic so for now we may keep
It up”
That’s very good news! It’s a huge accomplishement if you can get away with that.
In fact, it’s quite a revolution. I think you said elsewhere that 60-70% of your visitors previously used blockers. If YouTube’s numbers are similar, they could’ve done what you do and doubled or even tripled their revenue instead of building an unpopular pay wall.
As I said we shall have to monitor the situation, however one of our main aims with this project is to maximise streaming revenue based in an ad supported business model and blocking ad blockers is obviously a key feature of this, alongside not making deals with major labels giving them a disproportionate revenue share thus reducing payout to indie musicians and other content creators
“one of our main aims with this project is to maximise streaming revenue based in an ad supported business model”
Yes, I get it. 🙂 But then again, you do share that business model with most other rservices. And I haven’t seen anybody else block ad-blockers. In fact, I think it’s fair to say it’s one of the elephants in the room.
So this is interesting. It might even be more profitable than subscription services.
I don’t believe for a second that the ad blocker overlay doesn’t affect bounce rate. When you say you “haven’t seen a noticeable drop in traffic,” what are your criteria for that? Is this relative to growth? Would you be satisfied if the feature caused traffic to plateau?
Then again, if your most popular music video only has 130 views, there’s hardly enough of a sampling to provide any consumer behavior insight. It’s likely that a large portion of your traffic right now have some sort of incentive to support the site, & to cooperate with the ad blocker thing.
You can’t launch a successful product if your aim is to change consumer behavior when there is a viable alternative already dominating the space who caters to consumer behavior. There’s not a single reason for the consumer to go to videscape over youtube, but there are plenty of reasons not to, top of the list being the ad blocker overlay.
Plus your design is terrible & there’s UX mistakes all over the place. The site doesn’t even convert urls to hyperlinks in video descriptions. And share function is very limited.
It’s going to take something truly amazing to gain any marketshare against YouTube, & this product isn’t it. This is just a second rate copycat product with fewer features, more restrictions, & a terribly annoying menu. The vision required to built a competitive product isn’t here, the motivation here is obviously just to control the payouts. And that’s not enough to launch a product in this day of age.
“if your most popular music video only has 130 views”
Did you see the Beta version of YouTube?
“There’s not a single reason for the consumer to go to videscape over youtube”
* Free vs. pay wall.
* Streaming and download/merchandise sales vs. streaming only.
* More content 1: An open service that will offer music from all labels (as I understand it), vs. a closed service that only offers music from majors and selected indies. This is important, as indies account for 1/3 of the industry. A lot of people use the current YouTube version for discovery, but that won’t be possible to the same extent with the new crippled version.
* More content 2: It will offer Content ID system/monetization for all users (as I understand it), while the new YouTube version only offers ContentID/monetization to content owners if they make their entire catalogs available on Google’s service for free on release day. Very few content owners think that’s a good idea, and most will choose an unrestricted service if they have the choice. And YouTube only survives as long as content owners want it to survive.
“a terribly annoying menu”
I’m with you on that. And I still have a hard time understanding why anybody would accept that (rather hostile) ad-blocker blocker.
But then again, it would be huge if they did, eh?
I think it’ll go away though, but let’s see…
…oh and about that anti ad-blocker:
I temporarily disabled mine because I wanted to see the site. Perhaps other visitors reacted in the same way? It’s a beta site after all, and people are curious.
But ordinary users may be more hostile to the initiative.
Then again, I could be wrong. (I hope I am…)
Hi there, you are completely correct about all your statements regarding our service, Videscape will be an open platform, will allow content from all independent labels no matter how large or small, and all videos will be monetized with a large share being paid out to the content creators.
While yes, it is currently relatively featureless, within the next 12-16 weeks you will see considerably more features added, including track sales, full eCommerce solution so whatever the video has in it the product can be sold right underneath the video. We may even put in a system where if someone uses a GoPro to make a video if they take a percentage of the sale from GoPro the content creator allows them to sell their product right under the video.
As a further note; sharing a YouTube video when it is behind a paywall, or at the very least getting someone to watch it when they have to pay $20 a month to do so will be very difficult to do.
As to the Ad-blocker, I myself am not a huge fan of it either, it is a bit too hostile and this will be discussed with the software team. However, people who use sites with an adblocker on are stealing from that site. It is that simple. You are using bandwidth and watching content that people have and are paying for, and to an extent this is why the current music industry is the way it is, people want it for free yet it costs money to make. If we have a reduced consumer base because of an adblocker then so be it, at least we know that every content creator that puts a video on the platform is being fairly paid for their work and no content is being stolen. There are two adverts on that site, neither are particularly intrusive and they fund the site and pay the content creators. If you hit a site that is absolutely saturated with ads i fully understand the need for an adblocker, but not an independent site that is at the very least trying to make a difference to this industry and fill a gap that is being exploited massively by a company that always promised to ‘do no wrong’ to give musicians a chance to retain some sort of pay for their content
As to the feedback on the menu, i would very much like to hear ideas as to how you think it could be improved and we will see if we can put those changes into effect
I do appreciate feedback, and if its constructive will instruct our engineers to pursue that feedback in the hope of producing a product that people are happy and comfortable to use.
Please do bare in mind, our target audience is independent musicians not major label musicians. Whilst the volume of content being uploaded is significantly less than YouTube this actually provides a bonus to the content uploaders in that their tracks actually get a chance to be seen. And people who come to the site, come to the site to find independent music and content rather than major label content.
As a note, if anyone wishes to contact me directly to discuss the site please email me at tomoswald7 @ aol . com
You’re looking at it all wrong. Viewing a streaming site through a transaction perspective is just off the charts wrong.
Adblockers are only about 10% of all users. This is disproportionate among the tech-leaning crowd, which is your early adopters. But that 10% are generally the users who make or break a product, & the late adopters (the 90%) are the ones you make your money off of. Adblockers are simply a cost of doing business. Pretty much every successful website on the internet has learned this.
If you’re concerned with ad revenue on a per-user basis, you guys are even more hopeless than I though.
“sharing a YouTube video when it is behind a paywall, or at the very least getting someone to watch it when they have to pay $20 a month to do so will be very difficult to do”
Yes, it just doesn’t make sense — easy sharing is the key to viral videos, and viral videos are the key to success.
“As to the feedback on the menu, i would very much like to hear ideas”
Well, I would consider…
Redundancy 1: Your search area has a search field and a search button. That’s confusing. When users see an empty, rectangular field and a search button or a magnifying glass at its side, they get the idea.
Reduncancy 2: There’s no need to repeat “Categories”.
Looks 1: I’m not personally a fan of links that jumps around like crazy (in Popular Categories) when you hover above them. It adds a “shaky” or unstable feel to the site.
Looks 2: You expect there’s an input-field hidden somewhere in the empty black area after “Explore”. A simple solution would be to move “Upload” and “Explore” to the right, next to “Log in”. That would also leave more space to the search field.
Consistency: This is less important, but I think the search button text should behave like the other buttons when you hover over it — OR differ more from the rest of the buttons.
General 1: Video thumbnails need to be 16:9. This is not a matter of personal taste. Consumers expect full HD today, and your aspect ratio looks like 15 year old TVs.
General 2: I’m not sure what the “Explore” button does.
General 3: I still think blue text links below the thumbnails would disturb the thumbnails less and be easier to read.
General 4: Why not move “Popular Categories” up a bit and lose the black borders on each side? That would make room for bigger thumbnails — and you’ll need that WHEN you upgrade to 16:9 frames. 🙂
Aside from that, the overall looks are clearly improving day by day. Nice!
“Please do bare in mind, our target audience is independent musicians not major label musicians”
That could change, and fast.
“Redundancy 1: Your search area has a search field and a search button. That’s confusing. When users see an empty, rectangular field and a search button or a magnifying glass at its side, they get the idea.”
Um, let me rephrase that:
The problem is that your search area has a search field named Search and a Search button, also named Search…
It seems clear to me that music videos just aren’t profitable (Vevo’s rumored valuation, YouTube’s subscription venture, Videscape’s ad blocker overlay, & my own crude calculations based on traffic vs payouts). The cost of hosting+streaming+licensing fees is just too high. YouTube can remain profitable overall because they have so much content that doesn’t involve expensive licensing fees.
So if any streaming video service wants to be profitable, it’s going to have to capture the non-music audience. For instance… I see something funny happen, I capture it on my cell phone… why would I upload it to videscape rather than youtube? There’s no draw.
Youtube’s beta might’ve been crude, but they were essentially first to market. There was no behemoth video streaming service to compete with. You can’t make that comparison.
This service has everything going against it, & shows no promise whatsoever of overcoming those obstacles. This is a product built on wishful thinking & a desire for controlling the flow of ad revenue. That is not a recipe for launching a successful digital product in 2014.
Furthermore, I don’t see the standard YouTube product changing that much after their subscription service launches, supposing it does (considering all of their execs are jumping ship to Spotify, & Google has a history of pulling the plug on ventures that aren’t making the grade). Also, you say indies account for “1/3 of the industry” (based on what metrics of consumption?). Well if YouTube has the “major indies” in their pocket, that’s probably most of that 1/3. So, realistically, what are videscape trying to build a product on? Exclusively offering the bottom 1/6th (or less) of the barrel? What a proposition!
In reply to your comments JW:
YouTube has never been in profit since day 1, YouTube on average loses Google $100 million a month (often more you can check these figures online easily enough)
I would be interested to know what your pricing was worked out on?
Indies account for approximately 32% of the market, however, the major indies have not and will not sign the current YouTube contract, trust me, i know as i am talking to them 😉
We will remove the adblocker tomorrow to see what happens, always keen to experiment based on feedback
I was under the impression that YouTube has been profitable since 2010 (source: Barclays). This seems to be the consensus… where are you getting your numbers? Are you saying is cost Google $3.2b to run YouTube last year?
~$2b in net revenue + 12($100m deficit) = $3.2b
That figure seems a bit high to me, I’d love to know how you qualify it.
Also, if YouTube is supposedly so expensive to run, how do you expect to turn a profit? By selling t-shirts?
“if any streaming video service wants to be profitable, it’s going to have to capture the non-music audience”
Agree. And it seems that Videscape plans to do just that.
“Youtube’s beta might’ve been crude, but they were essentially first to market. There was no behemoth video streaming service to compete with. You can’t make that comparison.”
I think I can. Timing is everything, and I can’t think of a better moment to launch a video streaming site than now. YouTube will lose traction when they cripple their free version — and they have to cripple their free version in order to make people pay for the subscription service.
“I don’t see the standard YouTube product changing that much after their subscription service launches, supposing it does (considering all of their execs are jumping ship to Spotify, & Google has a history of pulling the plug on ventures that aren’t making the grade)”
There’s no doubt that Google would love to back out. Heads are rolling, indies refuse to give up and the press is bad.
But it’s too late for Google to pull the plug. It signed a contract with the majors that forces YouTube to deliver a successful subscription service. And the only way for a subscription service to be even remotely successful is to cripple the free alternative considerably.
Again, you are completely correct, I will have to take you for a beer one day!
Have passed your feedback regarding the menu onto our software team and should hear back from them later today
Again, many many thanks for your constructive criticisms
If you ask me, Kool-Aid might be more appropriate.
Hello Tom, how are you. I am one of the largest HD Karaoke Catalogs on You Tube and Vevo.
How can we do a deal with your company?
Regards,
Edward
Hi Edward, i have replied with my contact details, just have to wait for DMN to approve the comment
I guess I’m just out of touvh with reality with no clue what people want or basically with no knowledge of anything.
Videscape looks terrible, a big dirty google ad pops in your face when you go there, i have no clue how to use it or search around in it, its all just what appears to be poor hobbyists who should be doing something else besides cluttering everything up.
Who wants to watch that shit?
So is it a site for the vast amount of wannabe dreamers who have zero chance of anything because they actually suck? So will it just be them and their friends and family grazing the site with a bit of random stragglers? There’s nothing wrong with any of that, we all start somewhere, but maybe the game should change to not allow people to publicly display shit until they get their chops to a certain level? Anyways I guess not, that wouldn’t be good for the techsters. Of course the snakey lower level industry stooges and goons wouldn’t want that either, they need those wannabe dreamers to try and grift for some money.
I don’t even know where or how to look for music anymore, so I don’t. I’ve kind of given up bothering listening or trying to find new music, in this day and age that’s what all this has done for me as a music listener. I check out some peers music and certain people and crews and enemies, but as a music listener and a lover I have never been more dissatisfied and disappointed.
As a creator it’s great, cause good tools are now reasonably affordable and with a few right decisions high quality music can be made for very little. Of course it take a long time to get the skills and talents to a worthwhile releasable level, but never the less, it’s doable. Making money, well thats another thing, I’ve only ever ran into spending money in the music game, well i’ve made some here and there, but for the most part its a red number at the end of the quarter and since I don’t have the fans the money or the time to get on the live grind, well that’s just the way it is.
I’m looking at fashion and technology or even acting as a viable career option over music all day long every day. Still isn’t easy, but music sucks.
🙂
“I’m looking at fashion and technology or even acting as a viable career option over music all day long every day”
Those are nice options, so why not? You shouldn’t choose music if you think it sucks…
As for discovering new music: I think YouTube was perfect for that purpose until this summer. In fact, I loved it — it was free, you could make money from user generated content and everybody was there.
All that is gone when Google launches the new “YouTube”.
Which brings us back on topic…
Its making it happen is the problem. Don’t have the age in my favor or the desire to do the old pay eternal dues trudging through muck for 10 years before some sort of success and I am not in the right area for it, lacking the money or time to relocate to the right areas to maybe have a chance at success, so there are a lot of real world factors that hit you when you reach a certain age where you have responsibilities. That’s not to say it isn’t worth the go, again, just trying to make it happen in a way that will work for me and provide who I do business with equal or greater returns, whatever those returns may be. I’m a what can I do for you type person, which so far hasn’t worked out very well for me for whatever reason.
That’s why Porn is always so appealing, get paid cash right away doing something you do for free anyways working with a bunch of cool girls.
That’s what I need, opportunities that result in at least some income immediately, not these dreams and dangled carrots that you chase and chase running someone else’s gauntlet or obstacle course all in hopes of maybe one day making a few pennies.
Just trying to find the right path, the right in. Not easy in this day and age, surprisingly.
I guess overall I have just been highly disappointed with music and the music industry, it’s a real big let down and continues to be time and time again. Oh well, don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, wish Vid whatever it is the best of luck.
🙂
Quote “I don’t even know where or how to look for music anymore, so I don’t. I’ve kind of given up bothering listening or trying to find new music, in this day and age that’s what all this has done for me as a music listener. I check out some peers music and certain people and crews and enemies, but as a music listener and a lover I have never been more dissatisfied and disappointed.”
.
I get that!
I havent got that bad yet, but I do feel where your coming from..
course,
I dont know sometimes if my views are caused by my age (me getting older and more critical)
or are caused by the music industry that just seams really messy..
back-in-the-day music curation and discovery ‘was more meaningful’, Radio stations were relevant and didnt all play the same 10 songs.. A record store was a place to ‘experience’..
yada yada yada.. it simply sucks in some ways..
hopefully the next generation can do a better job navigating the “noise” and forced fed choices then we have so far..
haha @annoymous I like how your call rormix and vevo a failure and then try to plug your own product for a feature.
I am from a well known tech blog and written about rormix and vevo a few times. I believe vevo will get the model right eventually. rormix is growing quickly as well, they will be hosting videos on their own servers in two weeks (so sooner than you thing) with some interesting new features which I will be posting about soon.
“haha @annoymous I like how your call rormix and vevo a failure and then try to plug your own product for a feature”
Yes, that was a nice touch, wasn’t it? 🙂
Except this is not my product! I don’t have anything to do with it, OK?
I just happen to be very enthusiastic about the prospect of a YouTube alternative — and I’m not the only one.
…oh, and if that ‘well know tech blog’ happens to be tech dirt, then please ignore my comment.
I’m an artist, so I don’t want to have anything to do with people like you.
I have to say, the simple tagging approach on rormix helped me find some really cool new bands.
Also you seem to be promoting Videscape on quite a few posts on this site. Pretty spammy tactic.
If Rormix works for you, cool.
But don’t call me a spammer. I don’t have anything to do with that company, and the difference between Mike and yours truly is that I’ve never used this site to promote any of my work.
As for Videscape — yes, I’ve mentioned the site several times and I’ll continue to do so. You may or may not be aware of what’s going on in the industry these days, but it’s safe to say that a possible YouTube replacement is one of the hottest topics this summer.
Many contenders have been discussed at lenght. Immediately after what may later be known as YouTube’s suicide, I suggested that Vimeo or even Daily Motion had a chance.
But what I promoted more than anything was a free, un-censored YouTube clone — as close as you can get without violating any of Google’s rights, of course — owned and operated by the industry.
I still think this would be the best solution: It could be used by majors and indies alike, and revenues would go straight to the right holders. What’s not to love?
Then Videscape was mentioned. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it. But I think of myself as a realistic guy, and I’d rather support a company that actually may succeed than hope for an industry-owned YouTube alternative that may never launch.
So why don’t you suggest a more realistic YouTube alternative if you have one in mind? Trust me, I’m all ears!
But you’re beyond naive if you think Rormix can make it (or even aspires to). YouTube succeeded because it offered everything for free. VEVO failed because it didn’t. It tried to be MTV, but nobody wants that.
And Rormix tries to be VEVO (music videos, yes — cat videos, no), so it’s not a stretch to predict it will end the same way…
a YouTube replacement?
If a musician is working on it, it will fail.
If techsters are working on it, it will end up like YouTube.
You can’t make that distinction anymore.
Many techsters work in the music industry — too many? — and lots of musicians work with tech.
cool article, I have heard about rormix a few times in TNW and other big sites. They seem to be going in the right direction. I’m actually off to a few gigs of the bands I discovered through rormix.
I also found some pretty cool artists on the app
VEVO’s money making mechanism is pathetic and has no future.
More less they are just noise maker helping to increase live income for established artists.
>>The videos are currently pulled in from YouTube, but Rormix will
>> soon host the videos on their own servers instead.
What does this entail? Scraping the content off of YouTube, or contacting the owners of the youtube videos & having them re-upload the videos to Rormix’ servers one-by-one? Is this a curation service… i.e. are they just picking stuff off of YouTube, or are all videos on the site/app added via artist accounts?
Rormix is a horrible name.
Well, I tried to check out the app, but my 2 year old android seems to already be too old for it..
not available for my phone.. (or maybe its because I’m from Canada?)
no desktop version? WTF?
but the screenshots look nice 😉
Everyone should boycott the juggernaut, talent killer. Try to watch/listen to the version the little guy uploaded.
Is Rormix planning on, or already paying royalties to artists who’s music/videos is/are being used to create this service?