During a conference call this morning Google and Universal Music Group annouced the upcoming launch of VEVO, a site billed as ‘premium online music hub built for consumers, advertisers, and content owners..’. The site, which will launch later this year, will include UMG’s catalog of music videos, and will be powered by YouTube’s technology. The two companies will share advertising revenue generated by the site. Reports of a joint venture between UMG and YouTube originally surfaced last month, when the two parties were still reportedly ironing out financial details.
During the call, Google’s head of strategic partnerships David Eun said that the deal signifies a shift for “the way YouTube and Google think about its business models”, as well as the way music labels have dealt with tech companies (in the past relationships between the music industry and the site has been fraught with suits – Eun is calling this a “genuine partnership”). Deals with other lablels are currently in the works.
The two companies say that at launch the site will have more traffic than any other music video site on the web. Users will be able to access the content through the main hub at VEVO.com or through a VEVO channel on YouTube through a VEVO branded player (it sounds like you won’t be able to embed the content using standard YouTube embeds). Along with UMG’s full music video catalogue, VEVO is going to offer a social community and original content including behind-the-scenes video and entertainment.
Because users will apparently be able to watch the content through YouTube.com, I question if the VEVO portal will ever gain much traction – why visit VEVO if you can just go to YouTube, which everyone is used to? And the social community angle isn’t unique either – sites like MySpace Music already allow users to connect over music content, as did the now-defunct PluggedIn. Eun says that the YouTube and the content owners are primarily concerned with giving users access to the music videos they’re looking for, whether it be on YouTube or Vevo.com, but given that YouTube and UMG are looking to generate higher ad rates on VEVO they have to be eager to get traffic there somehow.
YouTube has also announced that it extended its deal with UMG that allows users to include songs from UMG in their YouTube videos.
Power move.
What we have here is a class system, Youtube for UGC and Vevo for Pro content. Whether Youtube UGC can trade-up to Vevo Pro content is a ?
Trading up to Pro level may mean cutting a deal with the; dear I say it… “The Majors”.
free pirates in TC dont like such things
Im suprised how YouTube contacted Sony about this, whenever I try and contact them they never get back to me.
Logic: Screw the music industry.
Who did you try to contact? And about what? I might know someone there who can help.
Sorry to say this, but who are you in comparison to Google. Unfortunately they’re going to take Google a little bit more seriously than some guy with a start up idea.
Having worked with publishers, Youtube probably gave UMG what they asked for to gain access to the content.
As Jason asks, does the new VEVO site make any sense? Will the joint venture earn higher eCPM? Time will tell.
Yeah, I was trying to enquire about music licensing for a project im working on. I didn’t have to but I tried and they are not responding to me in anyway.
+ they are arrogant ****ers.
Sad Trombone.
Does this have any impact on the UK PRS issue?
Yeah basically YT has bypassed them by going straight to the source.
we didn’t need youtube or facebook either … but look at the giants they have become
Vevo will turn into a global mountain of popularity
Absolutely, VeVo.com is likely to kick ass with high-quality video, video production stuff as well. Initialy Hulu was called “clown co” consistently by both Youtube and Google (and techcrunch )– how did that turn out?
I think Kincaid is making the assumption that Youtube will continue to be able to carry music videos without the “Vevo” label.
Ultimately, with the Vevo deal, Youtube will lose more dominance over video on the web. The hulu channel dominates youtube, and soon Vevo will dominate on YT as well.
The biggest win I see here is included in the last line of the post: “YouTube has also announced that it extended its deal with UMG that allows users to include songs from UMG in their YouTube videos.” Users will continue to do this and it is absurd to have UMG (or any of the other labels) to request takedowns.
I think Google went for this for the following reasons:
1) rid themselves of the lawsuits
2) the content still lives on YouTube (albeit in a custom player)
3) what I mentioned above-a path to not having to police UGC for license infringements must be nice
Will Google share revenue of the content if it’s played on YouTube? For UMG’s sake they better hope so because I don’t think VEVO will get much traffic.
“don’t think VEVO will get much traffic”
Are you kidding!?
Google/Tube and Universal will shove VEVO down our collective throats — making sure we eat, breathe and dream VEVO — VEVO.com will be everywhere — traffic will be astronomical
“at launch the site will have more traffic than any other..”
didnt somone else, hmmmm, Joost, say this as well?
may be this can lead to a major traffic to vevo and because of it is a joint venture of youtube this may impact vevo promotion
I belive this is a good move becouse why see music videos on youtube and search in milions of videos where much of them are in bad quality when you have a site where you can se only good quality music videos.
lol, I luv the name VEVO, why just buy a real name?
with big companies backing this u need better name?
Does anyone actually watch music videos anymore? Well, I suppose I’m leaving out all the pre-teen, teens, and college kids. But seriously, beyond that, does anyone care?
I can’t remember the last time saw a music video, and I’m not that old (31).
Your not the target audience and old people do watch music videos just to the old folk artist
A lot of consumer don’t know UMG or Vevo. They just want to see or hear their favorite artists. Youtube is well known for videos. So. This deal make sense.
Some bigs dogs in that JV. Will be interesting to see if it goes the way of all other online music JV’s….
I give this three out of four yawns with a hint of a snore.