VuHaus’ Non-Profit Advantage: Take Risks, Build a Better Video-Based Music Outlet

Commercial media has largely abandoned local and emerging music acts, hunting down pageviews, eyeballs, and other numbers. Yet there are other metrics, ones that favor innovative, risk-taking artists and spaces that welcome them with elements like artistry, complexity, and social impact.

Many listeners want to find music with these qualities, not just hear more about the same pop celebs and legacy stars. This resulting discovery void has pushed more and more fans to seek out new ways to find intriguing, emerging bands. One place many music lovers have flocked: public radio. These listener-supported stations, freed from profit-driven models, are doing more than sending out new recordings over the airwaves. They are also producing immense amounts of online content like in-studio performance videos and streams of live sets.

Thanks to the not-for-profit music video app and platform VuHaus, public radio stations can now showcase this content collectively in one place, to bolster artists on-the-rise from their local music scenes. As an extension of the stations, the platform’s status as a non-profit organization frees it from commercial pressure.

“The public radio stations in VuHaus have been at the vanguard of music discovery for decades, taking risks and investing in the careers of unknown musicians and spinning their records when no one else was paying attention,” says Roger LaMay, GM of WXPN in Philadelphia.  “This mission driven ethos is firmly ingrained in the VuHaus DNA, as our stations are constantly working to uncover the best new talent, regardless of commercial appeal.”

Because VuHaus is owned by the public radio stations it serves, like KCRW in Los Angeles, WFUV in New York City, KUTX in Austin, WXPN in Philadelphia, they answer only to the tastes of programmers and the demands of their audiences. This collective ownership and non-profit status provides VuHaus and their stations the flexibility to allow artistic quality and relevance to dictate curation.

Producers and programmers from the stations themselves were consulted for every step of the design process, ensuring that their listeners and the fans of emerging music would be well served by the platform.

This approach works well for artists, as public radio has been breaking bands for decades:  R.E.M. in the ‘80s, Beck in the ‘90s, Mumford and Sons in ‘00s and Adele in ‘10s, just to name a few. Public radio stations have a proven record for not only recognizing a good band before everyone else, but for fostering a meaningful connection to a scene’s artists, local venues and festivals, and most importantly the fans and listeners, who are the true power behind artists’ careers.

With VuHaus, public radio has a new and unfair advantage.  Their network of local partner stations is growing.  So too is the stream of online content produced by these stations, who are often able to host dozens of artists a week. “As our network grows, so too will our capacity to uncover an even greater number of artists from markets across the country,” says VuHaus president Erik Langner. “This creates greater national exposure for them and a more engaging experience for our audience.”

About VuHaus

VuHaus (pronounced “view house”) is a non-profit, non-commercial organization comprised of public media’s leading Music Discovery radio stations. The human-curated, state of the art music discovery video platform features performances from the studios and events of the participating stations, and is available via mobile and web.

The VuHaus stations film local, emerging and established artists playing live music in their studios, on location, and in intimate settings, with one-of- a-kind interviews, and live performance streams. VuHaus curates this exclusive content providing a single platform for music discovery in an ever-expanding video collection from America’s most vibrant music scenes.

The VuHaus network includes WFUV in New York City, KCRW in Los Angeles, WXPN in Philadelphia, KUTX in Austin, KTBG The Bridge in Kansas City, KEXP in Seattle, KXT in Dallas/Ft. Worth, opbmusic in Portland, Mountain Stage in West Virginia, KDHX in St. Louis, Vermont Public Radio, and WGBH in Boston. VuHaus received initial funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and is operated by its founding partner Public Media Company, a national non-profit organization focused on maximizing the impact of public media through innovation and strategic partnerships.