A new product designed to help users find livestreams by the artists they already love (as well as find new favorites based on their taste)
Livestreamr came about as the result of a real need that I experienced during the country-wide quarantine that took place in the earlier part of 2020.
As nearly all music venues closed indefinitely in order to address the uncertain health risk of holding large public gatherings, the music industry was brought to a complete standstill and many artists' livelihoods disrupted. Many of those artists took matters into their own hands and went online with their musical talents to hold live events virtually, using platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram. For a period of several weeks//months, the popularity of livestreams exploded, with quarantiners tuning in from all corners of the globe to watch artists perform in their living rooms or more fully-equipped studio spaces.
At a certain point, the variety of content was almost too overwhelming and I found myself having to physically write down when some of my favorite musicians were slated to go live, as well as the specific platform on which they were performing. Later on, I began using my voice assistant to set reminders for myself to do things like "tune in at 9:30 on Facebook Live" just so I wouldn't miss a stream. This was particularly important given the ephemeral nature of some of the incredible performance footage that was being broadcast.
After continuing on like this for a while, I eventually reached a conclusion: there had to be a better way.
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The product that I conceived – which I dubbed "Livestreamr" – was specifically designed to help users keep track of all of the upcoming livestreams that their favorite artists had scheduled by sharing data from their preferred music streaming service. The proposed application would also advertise other livestreams that the user might enjoy based on what artists they already liked using a recommendation algorithm.
As for the interface itself, I formed the brand identity around a darker color palette to make the image assets pop and used sharp angles and linework to evoke a sense of modernism.
For the home page, I designed the main scroll to mimick the design patterns that users had already likely encountered in music apps like Spotify and Apple Music, with carousels and artist thumbnails front and center.
For the schedule page, I devised a color coding system that helped users see which platform was hosting each livestream at a glance, with red denoting YouTube, orange denoting Instagram, blue denoting Facebook Live, and purple denoting any platform other than those three.
When I pitched Livestreamr to VCs from gener8tor, it was met with much enthusiasm. I received commendations on the UI design as well the strong sense of brand voice that I evoked using a bold color palette and slick microinteractions.
On the other hand, however, some of the VCs I pitched to had doubts about whether livestreams were here to stay, and whether in-person live events would return sooner rather than later. They also had questions about the profitability, with a stated aversion to ad-based revenue models. Unfortunately, they ended up passing on my concept, but encouraged me to pursue building it on my own.
Afterwards, the pandemic continued to rage on, and the return of live concerts came later than expected (hindsight's 20/20, I guess). As of 2023, the need for remote entertainment is still very much intact, and I expect that at some point in the not-so-distant future, concerts will follow the trend that we're currently seeing with movies, with a heightened interest in bringing an experience that was previously more often done in-person into home theaters or replicating that experience virtually from the comfort on one's living room using extended reality devices.
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