Q’n’A: Stephen Peach, Moshcam

Moshcam, creators of the world’s largest online catalogue of originally-produced live music videos, have launched a new look website, and have joined the ranks of the top 3% of music channels globally on YouTube, after only six months. We chat to Stephen Peach about the company’s changes and achievements.

Why did you decide to reboot the Moshcam site?

Since our launch in 2007, we’ve created an amazing catalogue of  live concert video with over 1,300 shows produced by us so far.  The artists we’ve filmed include acts as diverse as Rudimental, Slash, Alabama Shakes, Hall & Oates, Alesana, Beth Orton, Public Image Limited and Bullet For My Valentine. With that extraordinary variety and depth of content, we needed to invest in a more contemporary and modern platform that optimised music fans’ ability to discover all that great content and everything else Moshcam has to offer.

How is the new website better than its predecessor?

It’s significantly improved in all ways. We’re really proud of it and we’d love everyone to check it out.  Apart from being very clean, quick and responsive, it’s also incredibly visual and has a real focus on usability and discovery. On top of these improvements, we’ve also made the site far more customisable.  For example, users can create playlists of their favourite tracks, reorder setlists and share them across social media.

Can it be accessed on mobile devices?

We’re currently finalising a mobile-optimised site that will be up and running next month.  Of course, we also have our iOS and Android apps, which have all the content there as well.

What kind of content is available?

It’s probably easier to talk about content we don’t have!  Most importantly, it’s all originally filmed content, not just shows licensed from third parties. Some people have been under the impression we just focus on hard rock and heavy metal, but we’ve got strong catalogues in other key genres such as indie, electronic, hip hop and others.  Some shows we’ve filmed this year alone include Alabama Shakes, Cold War Kids, Alexisonfire, Bullet For My Valentine, Hot Chip, Bloc Party, A$AP Rocky as well as great Australian artists such as San Cisco and The Rubens

What are some of the new additions to the catalogue?

We’ve got some great shows coming up to accompany the launch of the new site.  These include Karnivool (recent Australian #1 album), Rudimental (a massive show at the Enmore) and Tom Odell (a huge hit in his native UK) as well as other critically acclaimed artists such as Daughter, Crystal Fighters and Little Green Cars

You’ve enjoyed great success since the launch of your dedicated YouTube channel in Februaryand are now sitting comfortably within the top 3% of YouTube music channels globally.  What do you attribute this swift success to?

There are a number of factors and, as you might understand, none of that happens by accident.  Apart from great content (which of course is a given!), a key ingredient is the strong relationships we’ve developed with managers, artists, promoters and labels to maximise the impact of each of the shows.  We’ve also spent considerable time working on key elements such the channel layout and the audience development initiatives necessary to increase the visibility of content in search results, related content engagement and so on.

We’ve been through in depth training with YouTube to help us refine these skills and we’ve developed a deep understanding of the YouTube ecosystem. We’ve been working with streaming video for a long time too of course, so we’ve been able to bring a few new things to the table. So much so, in fact, that we’ve now been included in their trusted partner feedback programme, which also give us early access to new features and functionality  As a separate part of our business, we’re also offering these skills and services to other YouTube channels that may be struggling to navigate the complexities of the YouTube content and rights management systems

Tell us about the new team.

We’ve taken on some great new people in the last few months.  Chief amongst them are Sarah Partridge (our Chief Marketing Officer), Kristy Botfield (National Sales Manager) and Ross Morrison (Manager of Programming and Artist Relations).  Quite a few people will know Sarah from her time at both EMI (where she was the Marketing Director) and Sony here in Australia. She also spent some considerable time working with Universal and Sony in the UK.  Kristy joined us about a month ago after spending 5 years at Fairfax Digital.  Ross also joined us recently from Primary Talent in the UK where he had been a talent booker since 2007.  All of them have brought a depth of experience to the company and will be integral to our success in the coming years.

What are the further development steps, after the launch?

The next major upgrade will be to our iOS and Android apps to significantly improve features and functionality.  That’s still very much a work in progress for us, and we have a lot of great ideas around how we can best enhance the mobile experience, and we expect to have more news in the first half of next year.  In the meantime, we’ll be looking for user feedback on the site before diving into the next round of developments. We’ll be increasing the ability to personalise the site even further over time.

What’s the Moshcam plan for 2014?

A key focus for us in 2014 is building on what we’ve achieved to date and, in particular, further developing our working relationships with all stakeholders. We want to ensure everybody is winning being on the Moshcam platform – not just the artists, but also the labels and promoters who support them.  We’ll also be significantly increasing the international presence of the company, with particular focus on the UK and the US.