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Unvalidated Ideas #017

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Youtube Radio Stations aaS

Youtube is a juggernaut. Youtube generated 28.8 billion dollars in revenue in 2021. Youtube Premium had 50 million subscribers in 2021. There are lots of competitors in the orbit of YouTube, but creators consistently go to YouTube to monetize. YouTube clearly isn't going anywhere, and content on other mediums often serves as a funnel for YouTube over the long term.

If you're a certain age you may have heard of Lofi Girl. The Lofi Girl stream acts as a radio station -- something that people keep open the whole day, while they work, study and do other things. Recently the stream was temporarily stopped (my tin-foil hat theory is internal server issues at Google), 668 million people had watched the stream -- that's a lot of people.

Maybe you're more of a fan of "Slow TV" -- another genre of content that does extraordinarily well on YouTube -- calm relaxing videos that have been taken of various kinds of scenery, for example a train moving through a scenic landscape. Another genre that is absolutely raking in views on YouTube.

Let me get to the point a bit quicker -- If you knew you could make one million dollars a year running a radio youtube channel, how would you set up a "Lofi Girl"-like stream today?

Live Youtube is "easy"-ish -- you've got software like Open Broadcaster System ("OBS") and a cottage industry of gadgets and apps to make live streaming easier. Pre-recorded content isn't quite so easy, though it should be easier -- users shouldn't have to muck with OBS or recording software at all! They should be able to just drag and drop clips onto a 24 hour timeline and go live within seconds.

Give users the ability to create pre-recorded YouTube video/music stations at the click of a button.

Just imagine giving every youtuber the ability to start their own mTV without anyone's permission, for nearly free. Of course, we're not the first people to think about this -- there are at least a few competitors in the space:

But none of these sites have the viral quotient right -- they don't have the kind of user experience that is ruthlessly zero friction and encourages addiction.

Read my raw notes >

NOTE If this idea hasn't got you excited enough yet, I've got one phrase that might do it -- "TikTok Radio".

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Victor (vados@vadosware.io)