Lounges.TV is betting on pay-for-view to disrupt streaming
The Media Leader interview
London start-up Lounges.TV wants to finally give online content creators a level-playing field with its pay-per-view streaming platform.
Scott Green, founder of London-based streaming start-up Lounges.TV, is on a mission to provide a fairer funding model for online content creators.
Led by an advisory board that includes LoveFilm and BBC iPlayer’s Ben Lavender, as well as broadcasting specialist, Remi Abayomi, Lounges.TV has pledged to pay all creators 80% of streaming revenue within 24 hours.
The company’s vision is to enable millions of people worldwide to generate a viable income by showcasing their talent online, with live concerts, live events, and live teaching seminars among the content tentpoles. Crucially, this revenue is supposed to come from pay-per-view payments from consumers. Green is clear that the advertising model adopted by YouTube and TikTok is not a fair deal.
“[Creators] are not making as much revenue as they should do online. That’s due to very antiquated revenue models, which is all driven by ads. And if you’ve got huge followings, you’ll get huge eyeballs and impressions watching the ads, but roughly 1% of [creators] have a million followers and performing well on TikTok. Yes, there are platforms out there that do help you grow audiences. But, again, everything is driven around advertising and impressions.”
So, instead Lounges.TV will seek to put all its creators on a “level playing field” — no matter how many followers a creator has, he says, all of the team will be valued on “how talented they are”.
It seems like a modern hybrid of old-school broadcast content commissioning. Green is tight-lipped about how many people at Lounges are going to be moderating content to evaluate “talent” at launch, but for professional creators, such as qualified teachers, there will be a formal verification procedure. Meanwhile, Lounges.TV will rely on users to flag unsuitable content via a report button, with moderators empowered to shut down live streams if necessary.
Meanwhile the more subjective realms of talent, such as singers who want to perform live concerts on Lounges.TV, will be curated by specialists. Louisa Johnson, the 2015 X Factor winner, has been recruited by Green to bring in unsigned artists.
“The music industry seems to be a lot harder to get into to get noticed and get found,” he explains. “And actually on our platform, we’re going to help people, nurture them, and use a lot of data that shows us who’s really doing well and who’s getting lots of interactions. We’ve got another adviser on our company who runs a business called Ultimate Artist, which really helps artists find labels, find management, find their way in the music industry. And we’re going to kind of help identify those rising stars and work with them and give them that opportunity to shine outside of TikTok or wherever they are at the moment.”
Removing ‘pain points’
Speaking to The Media Leader ahead of the company’s expected soft launch later this month, Green is confident after raising £1.4m via crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. Lounges.TV has over 760 investors, he says, and is working with Danny Donovan’s Build Media on a marketing push to recruit content creators and, eventually, carry out a broader advertising push to consumers in September.
Green is also keen to remove “lots of pain points” in how quickly creators get paid.
“The gig economy has become normal — people want to work when they want to work, especially Millennials. They want to basically turn their PC on and get paid; whether it’s Uber or these other big, gig-economy platforms, they pay very quickly. We wanted to merge the boom of the gig economy with the boom of streaming and offer one of the first gig-economy streaming platforms. So we’ve decided to reward all of the revenues attributed to any streams on our platform within 24 hours.
“Even if you did two streams a week, or let’s say two streams a day, and you convert small numbers of your audiences, but do consistent streams, you can only get £500-£600 a day in revenue, which will pay the next day.”
What’s more, Green (pictured, left) is keen for the platform to explore deals with newsbrands, magazine publishers, radio and outdoor companies, all of which could enter into live-streaming partnerships. Having started his career as a TV buyer at agencies including Lowe Howard Spink (now MullenLowe), Zenith and Saatchi & Saatchi, Green has spent the past 15 years in a variety of roles, as well founding the football betting platform Soccer Millionaire, which powered the Daily Telegraph’s fantasy football offering before it was merged with another company.
This career history isn’t obvious as a profile of someone who ‘just wants to do good’ in the media industry, but when what success will look like for Lounges.TV, the ambition seems more messianic than monetary.
“For me, it’s about” am I helping people?,” he insists. “Have I helped people along the way, have we helped talent get themselves out there? What we’re trying to do is create little mini businesses for our creatives.
“It’s not about ‘is our business worth hundreds of millions of pounds’ – that would be nice —but it’s actually about: have we helped, have we done what we set out to do; give talent the opportunity of having a level playing field, and showcasing their talent which is very difficult at the moment.”