Doug Morris, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Universal Music Group, the world’s leading music company and Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer of Google Inc., today announced that UMG and YouTube, a Google subsidiary, are working together to launch VEVO, a music and video entertainment service that will feature UMG’s premium video content.
In addition to VEVO, YouTube has renewed and extended its successful partnership with UMG that allows users to continue creating and watching user-generated videos containing UMG sound recordings and Universal Music Publishing Group’s compositions on YouTube through various territories around the world. The two companies will also share advertising revenue on YouTube and VEVO.
Launching later this year, VEVO will be a premium online music video hub built for consumers, advertisers and content owners that will blend UMG’s broad catalog of top artists and content with YouTube’s leading edge video technology and user community. YouTube will provide the technology infrastructure that will power VEVO and host UMG’s extensive library of professionally-created music videos on the new site. On YouTube, this content will be exclusively available through VEVO.com and a new VEVO channel through a special VEVO branded embedded player.
“VEVO will bring the most compelling premium music video content and services to the world’s single largest online video audience,” stated Morris in the press release. “We believe that at launch, VEVO will already have more traffic than any other music video site in the United States and in the world. And this traffic represents the most sought after demographic for advertisers, especially as advertising dollars continue their shift from old media to new. VEVO will be uniquely positioned to monetize this opportunity and a host of others as we grow it to become ‘the’ destination for premium music video content online. For music lovers who want the best in music videos, the VEVO experience will be second to none. At the same time, VEVO will expand the premium video marketplace, generate new revenue streams for content creators, and provide brand advertisers an unprecedented opportunity to get in front of a highly engaged audience. We couldn’t be more excited about the huge potential we see in the VEVO service.”
“Technology has allowed fans to discover music in endless ways while creating new business opportunities for artists and labels alike,” said Schmidt in the press release. “At Google, we are committed to promoting greater innovation and choice and are thrilled to be working with UMG in what will surely be an exciting new service for consumers, advertisers, content creators and the music industry at large.”
At launch, people will be able to access UMG’s entire catalog of premium music video content, including professionally-created and full-length videos on VEVO, as well as artist-generated content and user-generated content hosted on YouTube. VEVO will also serve as a syndication platform, expanding the reach of the VEVO brand. This platform is aimed at providing consumers the very best in digital music content while further extending UMG’s lead in the direct-to-consumer market.
Presently, UMG’s YouTube video channel has more than 3.5 billion views, making the UMG channel the most watched on YouTube.
Source: Universal Music Group
Ryan Nakashima reports for The Associated Press, “The companies will share ad revenue on the Vevo.com site, on a Vevo channel on YouTube and on a tailor-made video player that can be placed on social-networking pages and other sites. The free-to-view package will carry ads, including video spots of up to 15 seconds preceding the music video.”
Nakashima reports, “As an added incentive to Universal, the player will feature a button enabling users to easily buy the tunes digitally through Apple Inc.’s iTunes and Amazon.com Inc., which send most of the revenue from music sales to the labels. For now, videos will not be for sale.”
Nakashima reports, “Universal will spend tens of millions of dollars on the project and Vevo will be a wholly owned Universal subsidiary, said Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal’s eLabs digital business strategy unit. YouTube, a subsidiary of online advertising and search leader Google Inc., will provide the technology.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So much for breaking iTunes Store’s dominance, huh, Dougie? Leave it to Steve Jobs to teach an old dog some new tricks.
