Vevo Update is Trying to Draw Users Back to App

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If you've been on YouTube before then you've definitely heard of Vevo, but what you might not know is that the company actually has their own app and provides some of their own services. Since the company got a new CEO last year, Vevo is working harder to try to attract users back to the flagship app and away from YouTube.

Their current attempt at that is a redesign of their app. An app design only works when people actually know that the app is around to use, but it'll be interesting to see if it does make the service more attractive to new users. One of these changes they've made is how users can view their videos full screen. As well as the usual turn your phone horizontal and watch the video full screen, but now you can also stretch the video so you can view it mostly full-screen vertically like a Snapchat video. This is unusual for a video app and could actually make the videos feel a little more immersive if there isn't too much going on in them. As well as this Vevo have hired humans to introduce their videos and are already planning on upgrading their programming even more.

Vevo had better hope this is enough to get more users on their app. Vevo needs the money that comes from users viewing ads on their app, but most people would rather go on YouTube, the site and app they know and may or may not love and just view Vevo videos on there. Vevo needs YouTube and vice versa but neither of them wants to need the other. Vevo is looking for even more ways to bring their own money in including a subscription service that they're still working on. We don't know how that will work but it'll be interesting to see if it pans out.

The fact is that Vevo doesn't want to be a service that people pop onto to watch a video or hear a song. They want people to hang out on their site and they want to be able to specialise. They see themselves as becoming a sort of online record store in its atmosphere without having to sell individual songs and albums to users. Whether they manage that or not we have yet to see.