Paint a Better Picture by Using Offline Connotations

TubeRadio.FM ScreenShot

This morning I happened on TubeRadio.fm. To be blunt, TubeRadio is awesome! Basically, TubeRadio uses YouTube to deliver music videos in an iTunes-like interface on your web browser. TubeRadio is an evolution in the delivery of music to your desktop built by the team at Last.fm. TubeRadio calls itself “YouTube for music.” But is it?

Perceived competition at play

Who does TubeRadio compete with? I think they’ve leveraged YouTube content in a wonderful interface, so perhaps they compete with YouTube. The interface looks and feels like iTunes, so perhaps they compete with iTunes. Ironically, I think they also compete with their other platform, Last.fm, although I’m not sure they see it that way. In the very early phases of any new media channel it’s very difficult to define the competition. Until the new media channel is able to carve out its own niche, a user’s inclination is to use the new channel in the context of their other experiences.

TubeRadio is Last.fm with video

In the experimentation phase, which TubeRadio is most certainly in, perceived competition will weigh heavily on the user’s experience and the context in which they interact with the new channel. It’s important for Last.fm and TubeRadio to clearly differentiate their services and help users understand what makes each unique. Right now, while I write this article, TubeRadio is playing in the background. I’m not watching the videos and, in fact, I’m using TubeRadio exactly as I would use Last.fm.

Defining your space

I think the inclination for any new media channel is to state the long-term vision as if it is the market position. This can be a terrible mistake. You must communicate a new channel to a new audience, in a media landscape that is changing more rapidly every quarter.

Deliver this expectation up front:

• your new channel offers something completely new
• and it’s in the experimentation phase
• and therefore, your channel leaves the door wide open for experimenters to help define what can be accomplished in this channel.

The experimentation phase is as much about letting adopters experiment as it is about the channel administrators learning whether their technology has any long-term value. While the owners need to have a vision, it’s in this phase that they’ll glean the most open and honest insight into the trajectory they should take for achieving it.

From a messaging perspective, it’s important to let the messaging of your channel’s value proposition evolve with the market. By pigeon-holing themselves early on as “YouTube for music,” TubeRadio has set a very narrow expectation with their users. “We’re YouTube for music” might work as a quick pitch to VCs in a funding stage. But as a value proposition to users, the comparison unnecessarily locks TubeRadio into one type of service offering for the life of the channel.

Perhaps it should be positioned as a VeeJay solution instead of a YouTube for music. This helps shape my understanding of how I might use TubeRadio.

Connotations outside of the new media universe

If you use external connotations, like the word VeeJay, instead of online comparisons, like YouTube, your users can bring their own unique understanding to the new media channel you’ve created. In this way, you avoid setting up a compare-and-contrast attitude in your users as they experience your interface and functionality.

Get creative and let early adopters help define your new space.

About Incubator Insights

At Tippingpoint Labs our strategy team is constantly evaluating new media channels. During our analysis we see opportunities for improvement, using some of the key learnings across a wide variety of new media channels. We publish Incubator Insights every Friday to help Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists, and visionary start-ups avoid some of the pitfalls we’ve seen others make. Please let us know if these are helpful and productive. We’d love to know.

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."