Samsung to shut down Milk Video

Just over one year since the launch of Samsung’s video discovery app Milk Video, the Korean electronics conglomerate is closing it down.

Milk Video was launched to streamline the process of watching and sharing videos on Samsung devices. It aggregated sites like YouTube, Funny or Die, BuzzFeed, Vimeo and Vice.

In May Variety exclusively revealed Samsung’s plans to strip its content and services team but noted its Milk platform would remain untouched. Now, on November 20 the Milk Video app will shutter on Google Play as well as Samsung's Galaxy Apps store.

Its sister services, station-based internet radio app Milk Music and Milk VR, which provides 360-degree videos to anyone using a Gear VR virtual-reality headset, will remain unchanged for now.

Milk Music launched in Australia on February 12 to take on Pandora with built-in curation on around 200 stations – it also doesn’t use the ad-supported freemium model oft used by market competitors. But within a week it was blasted by global rights agency for the independent label sector, Merlin for its ad campaign. An advertisement run by Samsung in South Korea read: “Attention Galaxy users! No more paying for streaming music.”