Maestro 2023 Recap: What’s New and What’s to Come

2023 was a big year for Maestro. We advanced some of our top features and released many more to enhance the user experience for our customers and their viewers. 

Without further ado, here are some of the top features and upgrades we made in 2023.

Video Websites

We’re continuously making improvements to help users make beautifully branded video websites without any design or coding experience.

1. Improvements to Existing Blocks

Recent updates to our page builder make it easier to create a professional-looking video website. These updates include a new image and text block, an improved video spotlight, an image gallery, and text blocks. 

2. Duplicate Channels and Pages

Creating additional channels and pages just got easier with our duplicator tool. Duplicate channels and pages replicate the work you’ve already done with just a click, which ultimately streamlines your workflow.

3. Event Calendar Block

Event calendar blocks make it easy to arrange and display your live stream schedule so your viewers can easily choose which streams they want to watch. This is great for building anticipation for upcoming events.

4. Rich Text Block

The rich text block makes it possible to add longer bodies of text to your landing pages. This block is great for sharing news, providing more context on your streams, and more. 

Monetization

One of Maestro’s primary goals is to help you make more money. That’s why we’re continuing to improve our monetization tools. 

5. Shopify 2.0

Our team has worked hard to reimagine live shopping experiences with our Shopify integration. These updates make selling items on both offline pages and online live channels possible.

Plus, we’ve added a cart component accessible anywhere on Maestro, so viewers can shop across your site and check out at any point. These updates give you more ways to sell products while making shopping easier for viewers. 

6. Video Ad Insertion

We’ve rolled out yet another way to make money on Maestro! Video ad insertion is now available for both live and on-demand streams.

Use advertisements to generate money from your streams without making your audience pay. Partner with like-minded sponsors interested in getting in front of your viewers. 

Interactivity & Viewer Experience

Keeping your audience engaged is critical to getting your viewers to spend more on your content. That’s why we continue investing time and energy into interactivity and the viewer experience. 

7. Studio Guest Invite

Studio Guest Invite allows you to invite members of your audience to join the stream right from the chat, creating the virtual equivalent of pulling people on stage during an in-person event.

Other services require generating and sharing an invite link, but the process is much more seamless with Maestro. 

This comes in handy for pre-planned interactions, such as company-wide meetings, meet and greets, AMAs, open mics, and more spur-of-the-moment opportunities. See someone asking a great question in chat? With one click, seamlessly offer them the ability to join you on video to ask it face to face. 

8. Localization

Expand your reach and tap into a global audience with localization. Give viewers the ability to view your website in their native language with easy translations. Since translations are input manually, you can display the interface in any language that you’d like.

Use localization to increase the accessibility of your content and serve your international viewers better. 

Admin Tools

We’re also invested in making your experience as an admin easier. Here’s what’s new on that front.

9. Universal Accounts

Universal accounts allow users – both viewers and admins – to create one account on Maestro and access all of their favorite video websites. This is especially valuable if you manage multiple sites and want to carry your audience over from one to the next.

Furthermore, this update makes it easy to sign in directly from Maestro.io to access your account!

10. Video Uploader

Our new video uploader replaces the Library from the admin bar on the left with a new Video Library. It also combines Add Video flow into a single modal view. This means that all the tools you need for uploading videos are in one window for greater ease of use.

Plus, these updates make it possible to upload several videos at once!

11. New Admin Permissions: Producer Role

The Producer role is a new role setting on Maestro that gives you some added flexibility when it comes to who can control and see specific admin tools on your site.

Users assigned the Producer role can manage all aspects of your Maestro site needed to build a page or live channel and run a live event. However, producers cannot access sensitive information, such as financial reporting.

12. Improved Panel Administration 

Panels are a fan favorite here at Maestro, and we’ve released an update that dramatically simplifies creating and launching panels for your streams.

The interface for panel management has been refined to a single modal with “On/Off” switches. Plus, some redundancies have been cut down to make these features easier for you to use.

Integrations

Maestro is easier than ever to integrate with various streaming providers and other similar tools. This year, we added two new providers as partners.

13. Amazon IVS

This year, we launched an integration with Amazon IVS. We kicked off the partnership with a webinar discussing video monetization and interactivity.

In this partnership, Amazon IVS brings a managed live streaming service to support large viewership and real-time latency use cases, and Maestro brings flexible video monetization and audience interaction.

Combining these tools, you'll have everything you need to foster community, grow your business, and boost your revenue.

14. Dolby.io

Are you tired of 20 to 30-second latency with live streaming? Now, you can drop latency to under a half second thanks to our partnership with Dolby.io. 

Streaming with real-time latency is very valuable for broadcasts across many industries. Some popular use cases include sporting events, car races, financial news programs, and auctions. 

Join Maestro’s Online Community

This year, we launched a Discord server where users can chat about feature updates, bugs, news, and streaming tips and tricks. 

Join the server to become part of the Maestro community! Once you’re there, please introduce yourself in the #general channel. 

What’s to Come in 2024

We’ve got a lot in the pipeline for 2024. Our main goals for the new year are to provide more ways to make more money, offer more tools for growth, create broader distribution channels, and make it easy to create and customize content.

However, we’re most excited about the launch of TV apps. This will make it easy to create OTT streaming experiences on smart TVs, similar to Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and the like.

This is just one of many features that will be launched in the year to come. Stay tuned to learn more!

If you’re looking to supercharge your streaming initiatives in 2024 with monetization, community, interactivity, and more, we invite you to sign up for Maestro to start streaming in no time at all!