Introducing Hint
A streaming-discovery platform powered by humans through AI.
Why is it that we get stuck endlessly scrolling on streaming platforms instead of watching something we’ll love?
When I was young my mom used to take us to the video store to rent movies almost every weekend. The store usually had a 3 for 2 deal that was perfect for us since me and my brothers could pick one each. There was this one shelf that I would always check out first called “Staff Picks”. I would meticulously go through the back of the DVD’s, look at the different pictures, then read about the plot of the movies they had carefully picked out. I remember this super cool girl that worked there, she had the most amazing taste and through her picks she introduced me to classic movies that I still love today like The Craft, Pulp Fiction and American Beauty. Since I looked up to this girl I imagined she had thought of me while putting down her picks of the week. Of course I knew it wasn’t true, but her recommendations felt incredibly personal to me at the time. I’m sure she shaped my taste in film and I’d also like to think she even shaped me as a little girl in search of my identity.
Anyways, my interest in films and music got me into the entertainment industry right after college, through an internship at Sony Music. This was before any streaming platforms had launched and I consumed all my music and TV shows on platforms like ICQ, Pirate Bay and Napster (the top-chart on Pirate Bay’s website was to die for, always packed with what everyone was watching.)
Just to paint the picture, I was 23 and had illegally downloaded music almost my entire life. Around the same time Spotify was just getting started, it was still invites only and the only way to get one that early was pretty much to work for a record label or be a ner…ehm, engineer, and here I was at Sony Music HQ in Stockholm. Not long after I joined I became one of the first account managers for Spotify globally and got enormously valuable learnings on how a streaming API worked and how fans enjoyed discovering music on a streaming platform.
I ended up sticking around for 10 years. The last years I spent with them in New York building my streaming discovery machines for artists like Foo Fighters, Khalid, Calvin Harris, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Alicia Keys, P!nk and many more. But after 10 years it was time for something new; I joined Spotify’s HQ in World Trade Center for a year to see if the grass was greener but did not stay long.
I was looking for something else and an idea got stuck in my head that I couldn’t stop thinking about. I started obsessing about how to make the perfect recommendation, how to pick out one album that would blow people away for sure. Spotify’s machine learning algorithms are not really getting the sense of people’s taste. It’s trying really hard and they are without a doubt best in class when it comes to streaming discovery — but there is still something missing.
Just by analysing users’ listening behaviour they can figure out what mood a person is in and what life patterns they have, this is the base of Spotify’s recommendations. It IS pretty cool that they have their own research team — that is developing tools to understand what type of personalities their users have, based on their music consumption (without telling them). But I still kind of feel like they are spying on my every move. Maybe they know a little too much but in lack of something else I keep giving away my data as payment for the ease of discovery.
Spotify Wrapped is a great example of this. It’s one of the world’s most viral and brilliant marketing campaigns that spreads across the globe like a wild fire every year and it’s fascinating. Spotify is the only company I know that managed to have their users brag to their friends about the amount of data they keep track of. Something about this is making me uncomfortable.
Cut to the pandemic lockdowns in Brooklyn, March 2020, where my scheduled transfer back to Stockholm got put on hold and I got the idea of building a Streaming Discovery Platform with values that could help users discover things they would love without invading their privacy.
It’s been twenty years since I was in the video store and the world has changed. Suddenly it’s weird to think back on a time when every movie imaginable wasn’t at our hands, just seconds away. I discovered that the need for innovation within this field is much bigger for the video streaming industry, and that it has a lot to learn from the music industry.
Today we stream movies. At large we subscribe to 4 platforms per person and the global video streaming industry has grown into a $863B industry with all tech giants fighting each other using flashy, expensive, exclusive productions and remakes to lure viewers back to their platforms.
No wonder we spend hours of our lives scrolling through these different platforms trying to find something we’d like to watch. Research suggests we spend 100 hours per year for an average user to be exact, only on Netflix. The business model for the movie industry as a whole has shifted from making all the money via blockbusters at the theaters to selling the rights to the highest bidding streaming platform and it’s clear that this is starting to affect the audience and the film industry.
People are flocking to other tools to solve this problem, taking to social groups or friends that have a particular good taste and always know the latest thing to watch. Trying to google something in the style of “what to watch” will suck you into a swamp of lists and charts containing hundreds (if not thousands) of the same old movies, whose only function is to drive traffic to a news magazine that in turn is just harvesting your data via cookies. And of course, everybody knows this!
I miss the personal trust me and my brothers had in the girl at the video store, the interest her picks sparked in me and the anticipation we had while pressing “play” — and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
Time has come to leave endless scrolling behind in favour of enjoying the content we pay large amounts for every month and make sure the right movie ends up on a screen in front of the right person. Maybe that way we can start appreciating the platforms instead of feeling frustrated every time we face the horror it is to open them up.
That’s why we’re so excited to introduce Hint. Hint is a Streaming Discovery Service that will let you not only find great movies and shows to watch but also discover and learn more about your own taste in order to help yourself make an educated decision when it’s time to press play.
Behind Hint stands a team of passionate movie loving editors. Together we’ve built an AI that can pick out the gems from all streaming platforms, without sucking people into a never-ending-scrolling mode.
Do you want to build the future of streaming with us? Don’t hesitate to reach out on hey@hint.media or slide into our DM:s. We’d love to hear everything about your frustrations, solutions and suggestions in this matter.
Hint is your new favourite Streaming Discovery Service.
