September 13, 2011 If Ustream and Chatroulette Had a Love Child…
… Its name would be Yowie.
Yowie, a new contender in the live streaming sector, combines some of its competition’s most attractive features to turn the streaming experience into something even more personal for fans.
Ustream, as you may be aware, allows for interaction, but this interaction is text-based; fans can submit questions to an artist (or chat with each other) during a broadcast via the chat window. Chatroulette, on the other hand, brings face-to-face video chatting into the equation. However, there’s no audience - video conversations are limited to you and one other person… And the other person is selected at random… And there is a high likelihood of them being a pervert.
Enter Yowie.
When you begin a broadcast on Yowie, you’re greeted with a very Ustream-like setting: you’re on camera, and your legion of fans is watching. But from there, things can get interesting.
First, you can activate more than one broadcast window at a time. So, let’s say you’re in a duo. If your partner happens to be traveling, but you still want to hold a live stream for fans (and you want him/her to be part of it), you can easily make it happen with Yowie.
Second, and this is the cornerstone of Yowie, you can hold face-to-face video Q&A sessions with multiple fans. Here’s how it works: during the broadcast, fans can type out and submit questions. Whenever there’s a question you like, you can pick the fan who submitted it to appear on camera and ask it to you live.
Third, using Yowie’s media sharer, you can play video and audio content for you audience during the broadcast.
To see Yowie in action, watch this archived video of a broadcast that Neon Hitch recently held. You can also watch the introductory videos on the site’s home page.
Live video streaming has always been on the top of my list of fan-retention techniques, and the features that Yowie brings to the table have the potential to make the connection formed during a broadcast deeper, more personal, and more engaging for fans. While anyone can use Yowie, targeting artists appears to be a significant part of the company’s strategy, and it will be interesting to see how many artists (both emerging and big-name) jump on board, and how exactly they use it. If you have any experience with the service, let us know your thoughts in the comments.
This article was originally published on the Artist House Music blog.
Katie O’Halloran is a former Music Business student at the Berklee College of Music and a current Business Administration student at Athanasca University. She has written for ArtistsHouseMusic.org, LP33.tv, and SHREDnews.com. After scouting for various A&R consultancy firms, she launched her own site, www.ithinkiloveit.com, to profile unsigned and emerging artists, songwriting, and producers.
Reader Comments (2)
What if we don't have any fans?
Before going any further, make sure you can compare yowie to chatroulette. To me, that's not that easy, they really look like they have nothing in common. How did you figure out they were related someway ?