Los Angeles: Music video service Vevo launched new apps for Android phones as well as the latest-generation Apple TV Thursday, taking another step in its quest to build out its own platform and siphon viewers away from Google-owned YouTube.
The Android app largely mimics Vevo's iOS, app, which the service relaunched last November. Instead of relying on long lists and lots of text, it relies on large imagery.
And in an obvious nod to Tinder, it allows users to select their favorite artists by swiping right.
Vevo's Apple TV app takes some of that same design language, and applies it to the TV screen.
The app puts a heavy focus on listening to favorite artists, and allows users to easily get back to their most recent videos.
The app also syncs playlists with mobile apps, and iPhone users can even automatically switch accounts based on who is in the room.
Vevo, which is jointly owned by Universal Music and Sony Music, with smaller investments by Google and the Abu Dhabi Media Group, has long been known as the biggest supplier of major label content on YouTube.
But under the leadership of its new CEO Erik Huggers, the company has started to put a bigger emphasis on building out its own platform, and relying less on YouTube.
Apps like the ones launched this week are one signal for Vevo's changing priorities, as is its renewed effort to build out operations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The company used to be mostly East Coast-based, housing fewer than a dozen developers in its first San Francisco office.
Earlier this year, it moved into a new San Francisco office with space for several hundred employees, which are now working on Vevo's product development efforts.
In December, Vevo acquired the team behind the video aggregation service Showyou, whose founder Mark Hall is now leading Vevo's product efforts.