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You may have seen the advert with the Bees, the strong brand image or even the music pouring out of a beautifully designed application, Bloom FM has been very hard to avoid as a UK music fan and lover of streaming services.
For those who don’t know, Bloom FM is a new UK based music streaming service, similar to Spotify in what it offers, Bloom FM separates itself from the crowd with its unique way of doing things. Bloom FM is centred around two elements, amazing brand imagery and a irregular subscription structure that breaks the mould. Bloom FM offers its users 4 tiers of subscription that allow the user to choose how much they are charged per month, I will discuss this system later in this article.
After downloading and exploring the application, I decided to dig a little deeper and a week later ended up talking over the phone with Oleg Fomenko, Founder of Bloom FM. I spoke with Oleg for around 20 minutes about the application, the company itself and its aims and objectives.
Bloom FM are incredibly passionate about making their application absolutely 100% perfect for the user. You only have to look at their application ratings on the app store to see this, Although they respect the other front runners such as Spotify, they are also 100% focused towards making their service, the best possible experience for the user on the market rather than the first application in the game.
Passion and perfection are Bloom’s driving forces, Oleg compared a lot of the other services to “music inside a spreadsheet” whilst Bloom puts its effort towards making a creative design that focuses on fluid flow of discovery and usage. For some one who hasn’t used Bloom before it takes a little time to get used to the UI (user interface) however when using it for a while music becomes fun and interactive.
With over 250,000 users, Bloom’s aim is to make an affordable and convenient experience for any person wanting to listen to music. Bloom wants to re-create the music industry subscription system to further breakdown the pricing for users. Oleg talked about this strategy as a push to eliminate people having too much and just what they need for a price point that meets this standard.
He described this as a mobile phone contract, “If you have too many minutes you may not ever use all of this, and you will be paying a higher price… But if you are given a price point that is your natural limit, You will not overuse this and benefit from the more convenient pricing”. Bloom FM have really caused a stir with a contract starting from £1 ranging to £10, this layout has scared big record label, Warner Music into securing a contract with Bloom FM. Oleg explains “This is a radically new strategy towards pricing, We are still aiming for a contract with Warner Music however they are worried regarding our structure”.
Another very radical strategy that Bloom FM have taken is the way they have developed their services, Many other music streaming services started with Desktop and worked there way to Mobile, Bloom FM has started with Mobile and is working their way towards desktop… “We want to perfect every experience and we saw mobile as the best way to start off our journey”. Oleg continued to discuss the ecosystem that mobile offers the customer, on the go music and a much more gesture based experience.
So what is next for the rapidly growing music streaming service, Oleg informed me “We have a lot on our Road Map at the moment”, “We have a web version in the works, Windows phone application in development, An iPad and Android Tablet application coming in the next few months and some awesome gesture based ideas in the works”, Oleg reassures me that, they want to be the best at every experience incredible for the user.
I have no doubt that Bloom FM will be successful in the next coming months, They have succesfully converted myself into a subscriber for two reasons:
- Pricing is great for Students
- An amazing application to play with - Music is fun again!
