I attended the Boxee Beta launch party at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Monday, and I was blown away by their product. Wired’s Epicenter blog reviewed the launch here.
For those that don’t know what Boxee is, watch their video talking about their Alpha product below:
an intro to Boxee from boxee on Vimeo.
Boxee Beta
A lot of thought was put into the new Boxee Beta menu, and to many users, the updated menu style respresented almost a complete overhaul from the Alpha version. That’s all well and good, but what really got me excited was the way Beta removes barriers.
What if I want to watch TV in bed? Great. I can do that.
Movies? Them too.
Hook it up to a TV and control via a remote? I only need my phone (really, they have an app for that).
Look at photos on Flickr while listening to music on Pandora? You betcha.
Why You Should Care
Boxee has an interesting “App” section.
Photo credit: Boxee.tv Blog
If you take a look, you can see major social platforms, websites and media companies all coming out with their own applications.
That’s great! But wait… can’t you do the same?
You’re on MySpace, you’re on YouTube, you’re on Twitter and you’re on Facebook. Why not create an application that aggregates that content in your own Boxee app? Your fans can download your app and have even more access to you though Boxee, which is mobile (seeing as it’s a piece of software that sits on their computer) and allows people to consume the content they want – when they want.
Or, what about going a step further and making sure that your upcoming events are there, the app points to your website, and why not even set up an email address for fans to submit their own content and allow your app to aggregate it? I’m no programmer, but those ideas sound appealing to me as a music fan, and I’m willing to bet there are quite a few people who have already started developing things like this from the tech side.
Mary McKnight posted this tweet (regarding labels) in response to Jeremy Meyers earlier this week, which resonates with me for a number of different reasons:
That’s the subject of another post (or five), but as it relates to Boxee, the point is this: Boxee provides an easy, “what I want, when I want, where I want” way to connect you and your lives/music/brand/story to fans.
If you haven’t checked out Boxee I highly suggest you do, and keep a close eye on them over the next 4-6 months. The potential here for musicians is huge and I’m looking forward to see who jumps on the bandwagon, and how they pimp it out to fit their brand.
Do you use Boxee? Love it? Hate it? Have another idea to share? The comments are yours!