Many of you by now have probably seen my posts on social media about Hive - Music Discovery app or even read the original article about the first launch in April. It's been a few weeks now since the team gave the app a slick new face lift, added some updated features (including a festival scheduler), and tweaked the way the app worked slightly -- but I wanted to share for those who may not follow my Twitter or Facebook page.
We are definitely stoked on the response from music lovers, labels, brands, and the artists who saw the value in what the app is looking to achieve. This makes us happy knowing we are on the right path to give deserving artists a better chance for discovery with music fans, labels, and more.
Add Music
One of the biggest change besides the smoother design, is the ability to add songs to the Hivesphere (look at me making words up), which then each week, the song will get filtered into a package of 50 news songs that app users can discover. This limits the user getting burned out from listening to too many songs in one session. So now, each week you get 50 new songs to discover! Plus, there other playlists to check out between each week's new songs in case you are craving more goodies.So you added a song to Hive, now what? Once the track is live, you get to see how it is ranked for that week's uploaded songs and the percentage of Hive users who liked it (by swiping right).
A&R Reports
We also are creating more detailed reports on song statistics for artists, labels, and A&R reps who are scouting for new talent. This has been something we are really excited about as we can filter out all the clutter on the Internet, allow budding artists to actually be heard and get some instant feedback to the music.With the app, we are also mindful of what artists are being posted. We do not mind signed artists looking to premiere new music, helping them test a new style of music to see how audiences react, etc. but we also do not want people sharing acts like Drake, Imagine Dragons, or artists of that popularity all the time. Hive wants to help the amazing talent out there that gets lost in the mass amounts of music and put them in front of new audiences, share their music and stats with A&R/labels to help them get signed, and generally increase their visibility that can be rather difficult to do.
Some Stats We've Seen (So Far):
Within the first three weeks of Hive 2.0, we saw some serious engagement without a massive marketing campaign.- 6k songs discovered each week
- 20% of songs added to listener's playlist
- 25% conversion rate on driving users to links
- 200k new fans reached on Twitter each week
Partnerships & Promotion
Additionally, we are working hard to secure more partnerships and promotion opportunities with labels (indie, major), band managers, festivals, and of course cool brands that love helping the music community. We've already worked with a few names you might recognize below who curated some special playlists of their artists for users to discover. But, we are also looking to provide anyone we work with valuable insight into artists performance and help people engage with their content as well.
So, what's next for Hive?
- We are continuing to improve new features and reporting to really get the most valuable song statistics we can for artists, labels, and A&R
- Android version of the app coming soon
- New artist, label, and brand partnerships
- And much more!
You can email [email protected] for more info or reach out to me personally at [email protected].
