Samsung has been attempting all sorts of things to attract customers into their brand and retain those who actually decided to buy one of their products. On the software side, they have some streaming services called Milk as they were supposed to be “fresh and organic”. The Milk brand includes a music streaming service and one for videos, which was meant to help users find content they would want to watch as it included some curated playlists. That brand even includes some content for Samsung’s virtual reality headset, the Gear VR. Additionally, some of these services can be found on their Smart TV’s, so those who are really invested in Samsung products could stream the content across many devices.
A previous report suggested that the company behind these services was struggling, although Samsung claimed it was only a rumor. Now, they are communicating via the app’s Play Store description that they will be shutting down Milk Video, writing: “While we remain committed to providing premium entertainment services, we have decided to end support for the Samsung Milk Video app as of November 20, 2015”. The service was released on November 19, 2015, so it would have lasted exactly for one year by the day it gets shut down. Samsung had achieved to show exclusive content from some sources and some of their partners for this service were Vice, Funny or Die, BuzzFeed, and YouTube.
It is still unknown how the staff of Milk Video will be affected by this change and it is not clear what will happen with the rest of the apps that carry the Milk brand, but by the looks of it, the previous report was more than a rumor. It is also possible that other apps are doing better than the one dedicated to videos, as it didn’t even let users upload content and there are apps that offer similar functionality that are not exclusive to a few Samsung devices. In fact, many users might have not even used the nicely designed apps of the Milk services as they could be though as bloatware or coming from other devices, they might be used to other apps.