Sudden Industries, a broadband multimedia production and development company, thinks its newest application, Vmations, offers a better user experience than streaming media.
“Vmations are going to look better on your computer screen than streaming media,” said Lawrence Lux, CEO of Sudden Industries, New York. He said streaming media often is nothing more than video created for television.
“We're working contrary to most media companies [that] think of television first and the Internet second,” Lux said.
Intended for use by record labels and e-commerce sites, Vmations are created with flash animation, digital video and other tools designed for online media. As a result, he said, they do not suffer from server timeouts, poor image quality and other problems associated with streaming media.
“I believe in streaming media, but we all know it needs some time to develop,” Lux said. “Sudden [Industries] has created an alternative that is fully developed, better, cheaper, faster and works on the Web now, instead of five years from now.”
Vmations clips can include prerecorded and live video, still images, animation, audio and e-commerce. Lux said users can switch lyrics on and off, view behind-the-scenes content and link to other sites.
Stuart Shapiro, president of ArtistEnt.com, a sister company of Artemis records, said he was impressed with response rates for a Vmations clip that featured the label's all-girl band, Kittie.
“We got a tremendous response — hundreds of thousands of views,” he said.
It also was cost-effective. The clip cost $10,000 to make, compared with possibly 10 times as much for a traditional music video, Shapiro said.
Sudden Industries' founders come from the music industry, and its client base consists mainly of entertainment companies from the music industry.
“We're not doing a lot of proactive marketing,” Lux said. However, it is sponsoring the Jupiter Online Music Forum's fifth annual Plug.In, an online music industry conference scheduled for July 24-25 in New York.
