Kyte iPhone Apps Aim to Keep Music Fan Loyalty Flying High

While the Apple iPhone and iPod touch App Store has been dominated by free and low-cost games, a new generation of applications maybe on the way: Music artists and entertainers with their own branded iPhone apps. A company called "Kyte" is riding the wave by supplying a framework through which developers can create these apps.

Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA), a division of Universal Music Group, has launched new iPhone and iPod touch apps for a handful of its artists: The All American Rejects, Keri Hilson, Lady Gaga, The Pussycat Dolls, and Soulja Boy Tell 'Em.

The applications are free and available in the Apple App Store. They offer artist-produced video content, fan chat capabilities, comments on artist concerts, and the ability to share content with friends. They also include RSS readers for instant artist news alerts. The advertising and m-commerce enabled applications will also include ads and links for purchasing artist songs and merchandise.

A New Framework

Interscope Geffen A&M is the first producer to use a new Kyte turnkey iPhone app solution -- the Kyte iPhone Apps Framework. Basically, the framework is designed to make it easy for music labels and artists to create their own branded iPhone applications by using their existing online Kyte-based content without resorting to hiring a developer to build their own iPhone apps from scratch.

"IGA artists are using Kyte to produce authentic, raw video content every day, which keeps fans coming back again and again to see what's new and interact with each other," noted Daniel Graf, CEO of Kyte.

"Bringing this experience to iPhone and iPod touch is a powerful, cost-effective way for companies to converge their online and mobile audiences into a single community," he added.

Bridging Online With Mobile

San Francisco-based Kyte produces Kyte Platform, a set of products that make up a universal digital media platform. It provides an end-to-end, online and mobile solution for the production, distribution and monetization of digital content. Artists and entertainers that work with Kyte can now leverage their online efforts to engage with fans on the iPhone and iPod touch.

"Kyte's applications are very much a way for consumers to engage with the artists they are fans of in a very interactive, fully immersive way," Gannon Hall, Kyte's chief marketing officer, told MacNewsWorld.

"It's very clear that iPhone apps are the new distribution point. It's very similar to what the Web was like in the mid-'90s. It was, 'Everyone needs a Web site' back then, and now it's, 'Everyone needs an iPhone app,' because it's a great way to connect your brand with those who would be interested in it," Hall explained.

"However," Hall added, "Developing iPhone apps is fairly difficult and costly -- a brand will spend (US)$15,000 to $30,000 to build a custom one-off iPhone app. It's not something that's easily repeatable, and what we're bringing is a framework to make it easy and rapid to bring entertainment-based iPhone apps for our customers."

Most importantly, Hall said, the apps and framework support frequently update content from artists to keep their fans engaged.

Oh, in case you're wondering: The framework isn't designed to replace iTunes songs -- the apps are set to work with iTunes and promote purchases, rather than supply users with anytime streams of artists' music.