Cinedigm Corp (NASDAQ:CIDM) has officially announced the launch of its flagship streaming service Cineverse, available at cineverse.com and across iOS, Android and Roku apps.
A free, ad-supported version is available now on connected TV and mobile devices, with more distribution programming and product features expected in the coming months.
Ultimately, the plan is to offer the world's largest streaming film and television library, the company said, with thousands of hours of film and TV programming from more than 600 partners as well as Cinedigm's portfolio of brands and channels.
READ: Cinedigm to distribute Cineverse library of content on TV streaming service Vidgo this fall
To do that, the company said it will focus on fundamental areas being “increasingly ignored” by the major streaming platforms. That starts with compiling a massive library of content, in contrast to what it calls the “big-budget tentpole model” in order to offer unparalleled diversity and variety.
Cineverse plans to add more than 10,000 films and television episodes by the end of the year and several hundred thousand more over the next three years. The platform will launch with entertainment content from its own streaming library provided by more than 600 licensors and expects to dramatically expand the licensor pool over the coming year.
"With the Cineverse launch today, we begin an important journey as a company," CEO Chris McGurk said in a statement. "Our mission is to build the Spotify of independent film and television, with the largest library of film and TV programming in the world. Beyond that, our fantastic R&D team is working on tackling one of the biggest challenges in streaming today: how to make content discovery fun, easy and rewarding. All our streaming efforts over the last five years have led to this moment, and I'm excited to see us graduate into being an even bigger leader and disrupter in the high-growth streaming space."
Cineverse is also built around a lineup of free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) linear channels that showcase Cinedigm-owned and managed channels including AsianCrush, Bloody Disgusting, The Bob Ross Channel, The Country Channel, CONtv, CONtv Anime, Crime Hunters, Docurama, The Dove Channel, The Elvis Presley Channel, Fandor and Screambox.
Another point of differentiation is its recommendation system. Cineverse will deploy natural language search in the coming months, allowing users to conversationally interact with Cineverse's guide through natural speech or text dialogue, the same way one would interact with a person.
"When we set out to build Cineverse, we decided that we weren't going to build another standard streaming service," president and chief strategy officer Erick Opeka said. "We took a deep look at the market and asked ‘What can we do to add value and improve fans' and users' experiences?' What we found was pretty simple: people love choice but are increasingly frustrated with the chore of finding something to watch.”
He continued: “While these precepts are simple, the technology to accomplish them is quite complex. Leveraging Matchpoint, our team has built a service that can scale to tens of millions of users and mixes world class hand curation with next generation search technologies. We plan on rolling these innovations out to our entire base of services in the coming weeks and months."
The company plans on expanding application support for all major connected TV platforms, with Samsung, Amazon Fire TV, Vizio, LG, Apple TV and Android TV apps coming to market over the next quarter. Next-generation search features are currently in development and will debut in the coming months.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
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