Media & Streaming
Software for the companies changing how people watch and engage
Talk about your project
100,000+
Videos powered by HotMic's livestream SDK. We designed the app that shows off what it can do.
80+
Platform integrations on Audience. We designed its brand and UI kit for the 2.0 launch.
WBD Sports
Runs HotMic's SDK, along with Manchester City FC and Bleacher Report
What we build
Software for sports media and streaming companies
Watch parties and live chat for publishers who want live video inside their own app, under their own brand. We designed and iterated on HotMic's Swift app, the flagship demo for an SDK that has powered more than 100,000 videos.
Live scores, social watch parties, in-game stats and loyalty programs. Your fan probably has three apps open during the game, and we design for being the one they come back to.
Consent management and audience analytics that let a publisher build its own first-party data. For Audience, a platform with 80+ integrations, we designed the brand and a 26-component UI kit on shadcn/ui.
Websites and apps for media brands and sports leagues that publish constantly and get hit with traffic spikes. We built HotMic's marketing site on Webflow with a CMS, so their team publishes case studies and feature updates without a developer.
Fan apps and team sites with schedules, standings, ticketing and athlete profiles. Fans compare your app to your broadcast, so it has to hold up next to it.
Paywalls, content gating, trials and subscription management for OTT services going direct-to-consumer. Every abandoned signup is revenue you didn't capture, so we design the signup first.
Case study
HotMic: 100,000+ videos, Manchester City FC, Bleacher Report, WBD Sports
HotMic is a white-label SDK that lets companies run creator-led livestreams inside their own apps and under their own brand. Manchester City FC uses it for watch parties and live social events.
We designed and iterated on HotMic's Swift app over several rounds. It's the platform's flagship demo, with watch parties, live shopping, e-sports and radio in one place, backed by an admin dashboard for the content team. We also designed the brand and built the marketing site. Average watch time runs 50 to 60 minutes per session.
See the case study
Case study: Audience
Audience 2.0: a new brand and UI kit for a first-party data platform with 80+ integrations
Audience helps brands capture first-party data and grow audiences. Hundreds of media partners use it, and version 2.0 launched on August 13, 2025.
We designed the brand and a UI kit for the 2.0 launch, with 26 components and 20+ layout templates built on shadcn/ui, in 220 hours over five months. Audience publishes what stations get out of the platform. 99.9 Virgin Radio picked up 9,832 new email subscribers in a single week.
See the case studyWhy HQ for media & streaming
Fan expectations are set by Netflix and ESPN
Live sports has no patience for lag. Fans are watching the same moment on TV, so a chat that reacts to a goal a few seconds late gives itself away. We plan for load and latency before anyone designs a screen.
We've designed for sports audiences. HotMic's SDK runs watch parties and live social events for Manchester City FC, and Bleacher Report and WBD Sports use it too. Designing the app that demonstrates it taught us a lot about what keeps a fan in a live session.
Publishers need their own audience data. Audience has 80+ platform integrations and hundreds of media partners. Designing its UI kit meant working through campaign builders and the analytics advertisers use to report on a campaign.
An SDK lives inside someone else's app. The host's brand and data model constrain every decision. The demo app has to show what's possible without looking like any one client.
Fans leave fast
Sports and media fans will put up with a bad app for exactly as long as it takes to find the stream somewhere else.
We design media and streaming software for the second open, and the third. If you're building for fans, let's talk about your product.
Our work
RISExp
Messenger & My Designer Lab
Revere Health
Show&Tell
Messenger Memorial Maker
Nomi Health
“The way you've handled this is such a testament to why HQ is so damn good.”
Elizabeth Waite
CMO, Collegewise
“This team is insanely reliable.”
Randall Bennett
“These are my favorite vendors.”
Hayden Hill
CMO, Christensen Institute
“As a way to get to a phenomenal product, hiring this team is the best way to go. Overall we're 1000% pleased.”
Austen Allred
CEO, GauntletAI
“There's no doubt in my mind that we picked the right partner in HQ to help us with this.”
Shobin Uralil
CMO, Lively
“If I'm not your happiest customer, I'm willing to fight whoever thinks they are for that title.”
Jeff Allen
CEO, BlueCar
“We feel like HQ has been our secret weapon.”
Jerome Paul
CEO, Spiff (acq. by Salesforce)
Frequently asked questions
Yes. HotMic is a white-label SDK that lets companies embed creator-led livestreams in their own apps. The SDK has powered more than 100,000 videos globally, and its clients include Manchester City FC, Bleacher Report, and WBD Sports. To be clear, the SDK itself is HotMic's. We designed and iterated on the HotMic mobile app in Swift and built the admin dashboard the team uses to manage what's live and what's scheduled. We also designed the brand and built the marketing site on Webflow. The app is the platform's flagship demo, so it had to show watch parties, live shopping, e-sports coverage and radio working together. Designing around a white-label SDK is different from designing a single product. Every feature has to make sense inside a host app and under the host's brand, so the demo shows what's possible without pretending to be any one client.
Yes. Live sports is unforgiving about lag. If the chat reacts to a goal a few seconds after the TV broadcast does, fans notice. In the HotMic app, whose SDK is used by Manchester City FC and WBD Sports, we designed the live interaction layer: comments in real time, polls, and questions during a stream. Average watch time there runs 50 to 60 minutes per session, which is a long time to hold someone in a live product. On a new build, we make load and concurrency decisions in the architecture before the UI gets built, and we test under realistic peak conditions before launch. Sports events peak without warning, and the platform has to be ready when they do.
Yes. Audience is a platform that helps brands capture first-party data and grow audiences. It has more than 80 platform integrations and is trusted by hundreds of media partners. We designed the brand identity and a UI kit for the Audience 2.0 launch in August 2025, with 26 components and more than 20 layout templates on shadcn/ui, plus a launch video and a full brand guide, across 220 hours and five months. In 2023 we also rebuilt their marketing site, with a page for each of the platform's five products. Audience's own published results show what first-party data can do for a station. 99.9 Virgin Radio, part of Bell Media, picked up 9,832 new email subscribers in a single week, and Pattison Media expected 10,000 survey entries and took more than 34,000. For a publisher, first-party data only pays off when the consent flow doesn't tank opt-in rates and the analytics tie audience behavior back to advertising value.
Yes. The HotMic app we designed combines watch parties, live shopping, e-sports coverage and radio, and lets fans comment in real time, answer polls and ask questions during a stream. HotMic's SDK is used by Manchester City FC for watch parties and live social events, and by Bleacher Report and WBD Sports. Average watch time runs 50 to 60 minutes per session. Sports fans are comparing your app, in real time, against whatever else is live on another device. Engagement features earn the second open when interaction feels immediate and the UI stays out of the way of the game. The social layer should add something to watching. If it gets in the way, fans turn it off.
We start with conversion. Every friction point in a subscription signup is revenue you didn't capture. A trial with too many steps, a paywall that shows up without context, or onboarding that asks for a credit card before showing any value will all cost you subscribers. We design paywalls, trial flows and onboarding to make subscribing easy, and we test the assumptions behind each one before it gets built. An OTT subscription also has to earn its renewal. Content discovery, notifications and account management need to work well enough that the subscriber never thinks about canceling, so we plan for retention from the first screen.
Building software for media and streaming
Media and sports companies are building more of their own products, from livestreams inside their apps to data platforms that let them own the relationship with their audience. We design and build for that work: livestream and video SDK apps, fan engagement features, OTT subscription flows and publisher websites.
HotMic is a white-label livestream SDK used by Manchester City FC, Bleacher Report, and WBD Sports, and it has powered more than 100,000 videos. We designed and iterated on the HotMic app in Swift, the flagship demo of what the SDK can do. Fans comment in real time and answer polls without leaving the stream. We also designed the brand and built the Webflow marketing site.
Audience is a different kind of media infrastructure. It helps brands capture first-party data and grow audiences, with 80+ platform integrations and hundreds of media partners. We designed the brand and UI kit for its 2.0 launch, and before that we rebuilt its marketing site.
To be clear, HotMic and Audience own their platforms. Our part was the product people use and the brand around it.
Building something for media or streaming?
If you're building live video into your app, or a first-party data product, tell us about it.
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