Over the past couple of months millions of companies have had to change the way they operate and make major adjustments to continue to serve their customers. The world has seen a massive shift to virtual operations in all industries, and here at Zype, we recognize that we are in a unique position to be able to help fulfill  this unprecedented business and human need for streaming video.

Now, more than ever, we are proud to power the video services of our customers, who are doing incredible things to support their industries in these challenging times. Read on to learn how several of our customers are adapting their products and services in the midst of COVID-19.

Kino Lorber is one of the leading theatrical distributors of art-house films and documentaries in the country. They utilize Zype’s video infrastructure to distribute content through their website, as well as on Roku and Apple TV applications. 

How have you adapted your product offerings in the last couple months since the start of Covid-19?

“With the onset of Covid-19 movie theaters were facing a crisis and our films would not be seen . In partnership with local movie houses, we created a service called Kino Marquee to provide “virtual cinemas” for temporarily closed art house and independent theaters. In a matter of a few days, we were able to adapt our platform to offer theaters exclusive showings of the films that would have been presented on the big screen. As I write this we have had more than 200 theaters participate from the USA and Canada with more exhibitors expected to come on board.”
-Reid Rossman, SVP Digital & Direct Distribution

What types of changes have you seen in terms of audience viewership and engagement?

“The response has been incredible. Part of the Kino Marquee program is a revenue share with the local movie houses. Theater owners have been enthusiastically sharing our films with their patrons, moviegoers have been thanking us for making our films available to watch at home and offering a way to support their favorite theater.”
-Reid Rossman, SVP Digital & Direct Distribution

Discover hundreds of classic and contemporary films at kinonow.com

Music Box Films is one of the country’s leading distributors of foreign language, arthouse, and documentary films and television series. They partner with Zype to distribute video on their website, Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV.

How have you adapted your product offerings in the last couple months since the start of Covid-19? 

“On the Music Box Films side, we had a film in the middle of its theatrical release when the shut-downs happened. Within days we were able to leverage the Zype platform via Music Box Direct to launch a new initiative, StreamLocal, to offer our theatrical exhibitors a way to offer the film to their patrons and generate revenue while they are closed. For Music Box Direct’s SVOD service, we offered some of our content free for the month of March, and have offered extended trial periods for people to have another option while sheltering in place.”
-Lisa Holmes, Director of Sales

“We’ve seen an uptick in engagement on all fronts, and we’re delighted that people are exploring and engaging with our deep catalog.”
-Lisa Holmes, Director of Sales

Check out all that Music Box Films has to offer and use the code MBD2020 to get an additional 30 days free on top of the 7-day trial.

Laugh Lounge helped support the production of  Laugh Aid: Comedy Gives Back, a live stream featuring celebrity comedians, which raised over $350,000 for the Comedy Gives Back COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund.

Available on Laugh Lounge iOS and Android apps.

Crunch Fitness has extended their on-demand service to all membership levels, as well as the public, with no subscription commitment required. 

Available on Web, Roku, Amazon FireTV, Apple TV and Samsung TV

Want to learn more about how Zype can help you connect your video? Request a demo today!

How Zype Customers Are Adapting to Covid-19

The world has seen a massive shift to virtual operations in all industries, and here at Zype, we recognize that we are in a unique position to be able to help fulfill  this unprecedented business and human need for streaming video

Last week, Zype’s Director of Business Development, Alesandra Madurowicz, joined Richard Oesterriecher, CEO of Streaming Global, on Streaming Media’s Advanced Forum (SMAF) podcast. They discuss today’s streaming opportunities, and how Zype is adapting to help support our customers and community during this time.

Zype’s Alesandra Madurowicz on SMAdvanced Forum

Last week, Zype’s Director of Business Development, Alesandra Madurowicz, joined Richard Oesterriecher, CEO of Streaming Global, on Streaming Media’s Advanced Forum (SMAF) podcast.

Easily live stream your Zoom webinars and meetings using Zype’s cloud encoder in just a few steps


Zoom has been the saving grace for thousands of businesses trying to navigate today’s reality. Fitness studios are using the platform to host live workouts; media companies have turned to Zoom to host virtual events that have been cancelled. Zoom is especially useful if you want to incorporate multiple sources of video input (i.e. if you want to have multiple hosts or participants visible in your stream).

But how can you distribute your Zoom event to an even larger audience? What if someone that wants to watch doesn’t have a Zoom account set up? Or what if you want to put your stream behind a paywall or registration form? It can be quite the hassle to send out invitations and registration information to every user, especially if you’re limited to a certain amount of attendees.

Luckily, Zype makes it easy to broadcast your Zoom meeting to your website, mobile app, and OTT platforms. To begin, all you need is a Zype account and Zoom account (Pro, Business, Education, or Enterprise).

Steps to Configure Zoom Live Stream in Zype

Enable your Zoom account for streaming using a custom service (you will need admin permissions to do this)

Email support@zype.com to enable your encoder for Zoom broadcasting (you will only need to do this one time)

Once support has confirmed your cloud encoder is configured for Zoom streaming you are ready to connect your Zoom meetings. Follow the simple steps below.

1. Create and start your live event in your Zype dashboard under Zype Live

3. Click “Start Your Meeting”and open the Zoom app when prompted

4. Once your meeting is started, navigate to the “More” section at the bottom of the meeting window and select “Live on Custom Live Streaming Service

5. Locate your streaming URL, which can be found in your Zype Live event dashboard next to “Cloud Transcoder”

6. Input your streaming URL and enter “default” as your Streaming key

7. Input the website or player URL you want your audience to watch the live stream on, for example https://www.zype.com/request-demo

8. Click “Go Live!”and your Zoom meeting will start streaming to your Zype Live encoder

9. Once you are streaming, you can use the embed code in your Zype dashboard to publish your stream to your website or syndicate your broadcast to any mobile application, OTT Platform, or third-party Zype supports! You can even turn on the paywall or registration form so that only paying customers or authorized users have access to the stream.

To end the broadcast from Zoom, click the Live overlay in the Zoom meeting, and stop the stream.

If you want to learn more about how to broadcast and publish live events with Zype, check out our Help Center article here.

Have questions? If you’re already a Zype customer, you can email your account manager. If you aren’t a customer, you can request a demo to learn more about Zype!

Broadcast Your Zoom Events to Your Website and Apps Using Zype

Zype makes it easy to broadcast your Zoom meeting to your website, mobile app, and OTT platforms. To begin, all you need is a Zype account and Zoom account (Pro, Business, Education, or Enterprise).

Zype’s exclude category tag feature helps you automate your curation workflows, so you can save time managing your video content

Managing and curating your video content shouldn’t be an arduous task. If you’re evaluating your video content pipeline and have found curation to be a bottleneck, you’re not alone. Fortunately for you, as a leader in video content management, Zype has a new feature to help solve your curation problem.

Take for instance the following scenario: you are a fitness studio with thousands of videos already uploaded into your Zype account, and already labeled with category metadata tags like “fitness category: boxing, rowing, spinning” and “content type: free vs premium.”* You initially offered all of your videos for free, but now you’re ready to offer your “premium” content on a subscription basis, so you want to separate out all your content tagged as “premium” to be curated into new category-based playlists.

*TIP: Even if you don’t plan to monetize content today, it’s a good idea to tag videos as premium in advance, so you have content prepared for easy curation later on. 

Do you have to manually re-curate all your videos? Will this task take days to accomplish and cause a bumpy rollout of your new premium service offering?

The last thing you want is to complicate your curation process and aggravate your audience. 

For a bit of industry background, this scenario is pretty common. Oftentimes it’s best to first launch free content and add on paywalls after you’ve gathered some data on your audience. In the case of fitness content, this is a great tactic; offer free classes to start, then paywall your premium content to convert your existing audience to paid members. 

So how can we accomplish this goal without causing you unnecessary time and frustration on the backend?

Fortunately for you, Zype makes it easy! Using category-based playlists and our updated include and exclude category tag features, making these changes will literally take you a matter of minutes. Previously with our category tags, you could only specify tags to include in a playlist; now you can also specify tags to exclude, making it easier than ever for you to alter your automated playlist configuration.

Simply update your existing category-based playlists to exclude any videos with the “premium” tag. These playlists will still hold the free videos you want them to according to your existing tags, but will remove all subscription-required content you want curated elsewhere.

Next, create your premium playlists and set them to include videos with the “premium” tag. Keep all existing tag configurations the same and continue to curate by boxing, rowing, and spinning videos where they need to go.

Interested in learning more about category-based playlists and our new include/exclude feature? Check out our Help Center articles here and here to get started.

We love to hear from you! If you’re already a customer, you can email your account manager with any questions. If you aren’t a customer, you can request a demo today and get started with better video content management and faster distribution to your audiences.

Zype adds new feature to help customers curate playlists faster, easier

If you’re evaluating your video content pipeline and have found curation to be a bottleneck, you’re not alone. Fortunately for you, as a leader in video content management, Zype has a new feature to help solve your curation problem.

I hope this message finds you, your family, and your teams well. 

The last few weeks have been challenging for everyone – our customers in Europe and Asia and now our community here in North America and beyond.

I am writing to assure you that Zype has taken steps to mitigate the risk of service disruptions related to COVID-19 and that we will continue to provide you with the same level of service and support you have come to expect. Our operations and platform are operating normally, and we believe that we are uniquely positioned to support you through this uncertain period.

As the COVID-19 situation evolves, the Zype team will continue to monitor the situation. We have acted quickly to implement measures to ensure the health and safety of our team and to provide continuous support to our customers.

Please see Zype COVID-19 Update Center for more information on the steps we have taken and answers to frequently asked questions.

More importantly, we want to make sure you, our valued customer, are safe and healthy.  If we can be helpful in any way, please let us know.

Zype COVID19 Update

How Varsity Sports Now used Zype Live to grow their subscriber base by nearly 500%

It’s 2020, and the video industry is growing at a faster pace than ever before. The expectations of media consumers have grown rapidly over the past few decades, and with more options than ever before, the pressure is on for brands to deliver compelling content. Companies of all sizes are being forced to adapt as it becomes more and more clear that in order to survive in the streaming era, they must incorporate video into their business strategies. 

Among those businesses is Varsity Sports Now (VSN), who produces and distributes some of the most binge-worthy high school sports video on-demand and live broadcast content in the state of Louisiana.

Eric Richey, CEO and Founder of VSN, has been working in the Louisiana sports industry covering high school sports his entire career, so when he was presented with the opportunity to create a digital network, it was a no-brainer.

Although Varsity Sports Now was already using Zype’s platform to publish a ton of great video on demand content to their website, they were still missing something that would engage existing viewers, while capturing a new audience. That’s when VSN began exploring live broadcast capabilities, powered by Zype’s Live infrastructure.

Adopting Zype Live was a huge success (check out archives of their 2019 live games)! VSN’s subscriber base grew by 460% within a week of broadcasting their first game, and they were able to set themselves apart by providing both historical and live sports coverage for teams and coaches in the Louisiana tri state area.

VSN also wanted to up their discoverability and give their current audience new places to tune in, so they leveraged Zype’s App Distribution tools to launch new video distribution channels. With the help of Zype’s Professional Services team, they were able to publish three applications: Apple iOS, Apple TV and Android mobile.

As for 2020, the company will continue to invest in the VSN network by securing large-scale live sports events, such as semi-final and state championship games, and are looking to expand their coverage to other states.

Download Varsity Sports Now on iOS, Android, and Apple TV or watch on the Web today!

Want to learn more about how Zype Live can help transform your video business? Request a demo!

Zype Success Story: Varsity Sports Now

Zype's CEO on DEW Webinar: Optimizing OTT Distribution

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