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Vevo announces native app for Apple TV, offers curated content based on your tastes

vevo-big

Vevo has today announced a native tvOS app for Apple TV, with a Spotlight section auto-playing a stream of music videos based on your own tastes.

Vevo brings the smooth experience of the new mobile app and customizes it for the best lean-back experience. The Spotlight section autoplays so that a user can put down the remote and instantly enjoy a stream of music videos curated to their individual tastes. 

The audience can also easily navigate through the app to see top videos by genre; search for individual artists and videos; and select new favorite artists …

As you’d expect, playlists and favorite artists sync between mobile, desktop and Apple TV apps, with changes instantly updated across platforms. The remote trackpad can be used to skip forward & back, replay, favorite a video and show the playlist.

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The app is a free download from the Apple TV App Store.

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Comments

  1. iSRS - 8 years ago

    Seems like they are fully using the potential of the touch face on the remote, too

  2. It’s so buggy :(

  3. Inaba-kun (@Inaba_kun) - 8 years ago

    The Apple TV desperately needs more native apps. The current lineup of streaming services is plagued by lazy Apple TV 3 ports which are little more than a screen of text on a black screen. Zero design, zero flair, zero appeal, zero effort from the developers.

    YouTube, Crunchyroll, and Now TV are particularly bad offenders. All three look like they belong on a 1980s IBM PC.

    That said, even a terrible app is better than no app at all, and the lack of Amazon and all but one of the big UK streaming services makes the ATV a mediocre offering at best. I recommend the Roku to anyone who is looking for a cheap streaming box as ultimately content is king, and nobody has more content than Roku. Plus Roku apps, at least for the big services, are vastly more appealing visually than the plethora of ugly Apple TV 3 ports the ATV 4 is crippled with.

  4. .max (@pointum) - 8 years ago

    Awesome. Vevo has been one of most used apps on my Apple TV. But it gets really annoying to see the same music videos repeated again and again. Especially since there was not quick way to skip to the next one. I hope this update proves to bring more randomness and diversity.

  5. Franklin McMahon - 8 years ago

    New interface is pretty bad, I installed/tested last night. If you are a Vevo fan who liked the previous interface you may not be happy. First of all the select (play) button is now a (heart) like button, and it’s downhill from there. The interface is not designed to let you navigate around and play clips you like, it is designed to keep videos playing non-stop as you jump to the next one.

    Also the biggest issue for me, it completely screws up using Vevo with a Harmony remote. Since the playlist is the top of the touchpad, on the Harmony Elite there is no actual way (that I can figure out) to even select songs on the playlist I have spent a year developing. It completely erases the Apple-suggested layout of how apps should work (like the YouTube app) and goes in a total different direction.

    Some apps like the HBO Go app do have their own interface, but it is immediately apparent how it works and is easy to navigate after just 30 seconds of figuring out. Vevo’s new interface is very obtuse, and again, it steers you into playing a stream of videos and liking them, not displaying an on-screen library to easily choose content, like just about every other video app on the new Apple TV.

    Unlike.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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