Swedish live-television streaming service Magine is expanding into the UK, by partnering with ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. The app will be available to 3,000 beta users, and can be downloaded on androids, Windows and Apple starting Tuesday. "In a few months, we will be launching a full service in the UK and are talking to other broadcasters like the BBC to bring on board as well," Magine CEO Ambuj Goyal tells WIRED on launch day. "We're also talking to partners in other European, Latin American and Asian countries to go live."
Founded in Sweden in 2012, the internet-only cable provider now has 1.5 million registered users in Sweden and Germany, 38 per cent of whom don't own a television. Their goal: to enable people to watch live television on any device. "90 years after TVs were invented, we are still watching live television on a screen stuck to a wall with wires and cables," says Goyal. "We want to change that."
The service, which has raised €60m in the last 12 months, streams live and recorded television channels to your phones, tablet or computer. While New York-based Aereo, now bankrupt, used tiny antennae to pick up neighbours' television signals to offer a similar service, Magine's approach is to negotiate regional deals with hundreds of individual channels, including NBC Universal, Discovery, Disney, the BBC, and stream their content from its own servers. "We wanted to create cloud-based live television, that we can deliver in any corner of the world, with extreme low latencies and extreme clarity of signal," Goyal says. Of course, unlimited content is rarely free. Magine makes money by offering a freemium model: in Germany, for instance, 42 channels are free and the rest range from €6-€99 per month. "The exact pricing model in the UK is still under discussion, and will depend on what our beta users in the UK feedback but content costs," Goyal says.
What makes Magine unique, according to Goyal, is that it can carry hundreds of thousands of channels, compared to the limited shelf space of traditional cable companies. "The cost of distribution is so low for us that we can be truly global, we are limited only by licensing," he says. "We want to create a marketplace for live television, where anyone can publish and anyone can watch. Almost like YouTube for live television."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
