With a complete facelift coming mid-July, the iPhone app Stereotypes is looking to expertly blend the past and future of music – specifically, the music video portion of both. Divulged in a company blog post last month by CEO Jason Keck, the Stereotypes team noted the societal power and energy that came from the 1980s MTV-peak era and saw an open opportunity to blend that consumer/fan devotion with the energy of the present day crowd who frequent content via YouTube on their desktops, and now, mobile devices as well.
The primary lifeblood of the Stereotypes app is the VJ mentality. Long running and widely popular shows like MTV’s Total Request Live and VH1′s Top 20 Countdown were very much propelled by the unique and magnetic personas of their VJ’s and by the unpredictable component of how each video would be introduced or possibly bumped from its previous ranking.
Music-centric channels are not at the popularity they were in the 80s or 90s but the enjoyment and appreciation of their entertainment style is just what Stereotypes evokes and what people still engage with. Users sign up and accomplish three main things with the use of the app:
1. Creating an impression of their musical tastes for others by sharing different YouTube videos and giving a place of taste significance to them via questions posed by the app.
2. Uniquely and individually promoting themselves / their brand with original “video introductions”
3. Sustaining social interaction via comments and favorites on these recordings and the accompanying songs, from followers.
This combination of action and reaction is an interesting new direction for Stereotypes, which didn’t start out as a VJ-centered app but rather had several different modes of engagement that amounted to almost too much stimulation and choice. Jason Keck shed some additional light on how things unfolded for Stereotypes and it is intriguing to hear how his app’s evolution fits into the still changing mobile video sector.
SoundCtrl: You have explained on your blog how you and your team eventually narrowed the app’s scope to increase appeal. To gain a better sense of the full picture, can you share with us why you originally decided to build such a feature-rich platform in the beginning? Was it a business projection? Inspiration from another app’s model?
Jason Keck: Making Stereotypes feature-heavy in the beginning was a combination a grand vision and an engineer’s approach to business.
Our vision for Stereotypes was (and still is) to create a new way for people to communicate their unique personal story using music. I’ve always loved bringing people together as part of a community in my personal and professional life, and I’ve always loved using existing tools as the building blocks for creating something new.
So we set out to build a music social network that integrated different music platforms like Spotify, Rdio, Last.fm and iTunes, making it easier to share music recommendations as a form of message that would let people communicate thier personal story, bringing them closer to friends through music. Our “unique offering” was not a single feature, but a unique combination of features that would be the most a comprehensive platform for listening to music and sharing music.
As we set out to build this comprehensive platform that was everything to everyone in music, we took an engineering approach, built feature after feature, thinking that more is better. We continued this approach until we got into the DreamIt Ventures accelerator program. Having recognized that most of the successful companies coming out of DreamIt had pivoted at some point, we took a step back, looked at what we were doing realized that we needed to simplify rather than build more.
SoundCtrl: The idea of music lovers—especially young music lovers—expressing their personality and identity as VJs definitely has appeal. When it comes to entertainers though—especially up-and-coming musicians—why do you think that Stereotypes is a good platform for representing your personal brand when you are asking them to talk about music from other artists? Sure, musicians love other people’s music as well, but isn’t there a risk in asking artists to do things that take the focus off of themselves?
Jason Keck: It’s important to remember that entertainers are people too. Oftentimes, we’re so obsessed with entertainers that we’re also dying to know what they’re really like off-stage and off-camera. MTV recently released some research which revealed that “more than three-quarters of Millennials say they feel a stronger connection to musicians who are open about who they are.”. The idea they call “zero-distancing” is that “artists are expected to be constantly accessible, especially on social media, offering unique and intimate moments to their fans.”
Entertainers who’ve realized this understand that aggressive promotion of your own material on social media tends to irritate fans. You can only say “check out my new video” so many times before it gets old. The new Stereotypes app gives entertainers a way to tell their unique personal story, allowing them to build intimate relationships with their fans by sharing their identity through the music they love.
On Stereotypes, the focus is primarily on the VJ and their personality, and secondarily on the music videos. By talking about other people’s music, VJ’s personalities come through in a unique and compelling way. The music merely functions as a cultural shorthand for representing the VJ’s identity.
SoundCtrl: When you decided to pursue mobile video as a new direction for Stereotypes, did you have any reservations about things like international boundaries or electronic limitations on content that might inhibit someone from sharing songs that they love?
Jason Keck: Our target market for launch is the US and we believe there is a meaningful business opportunity in the US alone. We intend to be a global business in the long run, and I know from my time running business development for Shazam that there are alternate music streaming solutions we could leverage in other territories, if necessary. For now, YouTube and Soundcloud provide sufficient music coverage for a sufficient part of the world to meet our needs.
SoundCtrl: Mobile video viewing, curating, and creation is certainly on the upswing but what would you say are the biggest challenges in the mobile video market these days? Are you already thinking of how Stereotypes could evolve to address the challenges in the market?
Jason Keck: When we decided to make this pivot, my co-founder, Eric Bogs, and I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what the world would be like in 5 years. We wanted to build a product that would be a viable standalone business now and a highly profitable business in the future.
In the future, we knew the wireless speed and connectivity will be better, paving the way for mobile video. That said, we wanted to be sure that there was near-term opportunity as well. This research report from Google highlighted the fact that there are 1 billion monthly active users on YouTube and that smartphone usage was up 74%.
During our visioning exercise, we acknowledged a few emerging trends such as “The rise of the Influencer”—the idea that people will be turning regularly to individual people for media consumption. We also recognized that people will be watching video content on their phones in short bursts rather than long periods of time. Lastly, we realized that people will be more and more comfortable expressing themselves online.
From a user perspective, Vine has shown us that there is an opportunity for apps which provide a platform for users to create engaging video content using a particular format. With the Stereotypes app, we make it easy to tell your unique personal story by simply answering questions about your taste in music with a user generated video linked to a YouTube music video.
SoundCtrl: What are your thoughts on the potential for Stereotypes to team up with artists to drive user acquisition?
Jason Keck: The potential for us to work with developing artists and entertainers is huge. As with anyone trying to make a name for themselves in a crowded space, the key to getting noticed is to have a powerful and unique story. These days, your music, your videos and your performances are only part of the story. You also need a platform to engage directly with your fans and a tool-suite to create engaging content. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are great for sharing images and text content. Vine is great for sharing short user-generated videos. YouTube is great for sharing high quality, produced and packaged video content. But there is nothing that lets you combine a personal intro video with a packaged music video which lets you so easily and safely communicate intimate personal information the way Stereotypes does.
We already have 13 Featured VJs with a combined reach of over 1 million fans who’ve agreed to come on-board for our launch to talk about how music defines them as people. We have an agreement with these VJs to feature them in the app in exchange for them sharing their Stereotypes videos with their fans on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re interested in coming on-board as a Featured VJ, you can find out more information here.
SoundCtrl: We all wish you the very best with Stereotypes! Thanks for chatting!
You can download the Stereotypes app form the iTunes app store HERE
Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1
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