Inside LessThan3’s Pivot: From Dance Blog to Becoming ‘the MTV for the EDM Generation’: Exclusive
LessThan3 has relaunched as a multi-channel video network in a bid to become "the MTV for the EDM Generation."
LessThan3 has relaunched as a multi-channel video network in a bid to become “the MTV for the EDM Generation.”
“We don’t feel that electronic music currently has a good outlet on which to display video,” Josh Bennett, editor-in-chief of LessThan3, says.
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Formerly an editorial-driven dance music blog, the site has been rebuilt from the ground up. The home page now serves as a revolving video platform. Upon arriving, users can select from multiple channels, divided and curated by moods and filters such as “chill” and “groove.” Videos range from new hits like Oliver Heldens and Shaun Franks’ “Shades of Grey” to classics like Fatboy Slims’ “Weapon of Choice.”
The site’s founders aimed to execute the redesign without compromising editorial content. The site’s long-standing news section, The Pulse, now functions as a streamlined feed on the home page, while it can still be accessed in full at the top of the page.
As Bennett explains, blogs have become increasingly reliant upon social media to generate traffic, and issues arise when sites like Facebook change their content-sharing algorithm, limiting the audience engagement of non-viral material.
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Rather than succumb to popular “click-bait tactics,” LessThan3 decided a change was in order: “We didn’t want to be associated with that,” Bennett says. “That wasn’t why I got into this. It wasn’t why any of the team got into this. We got into this because we wanted to expose good music and be a curatorial source for music and write well-thought out, well-written editorial.”
Thus spawned the new LessThan3. To facilitate the relaunch, Bennett and crew worked with Maestro, a social video platform for online media. The company has leveraged their interactive technology to help design content channels for OWSLA, Monstercat, Above & Beyond, and more recently, deadmau5.
“We looked at the trend of where everything is going in terms of media format, and that is video, very clearly,” Ari Evans, CEO of Maestro, says. “It’s projected to make up to 70 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2017. We realized no one is really owning that space, and why is that?”
Check out the new LessThan3 here.
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