Universal joins with YouTube for new download service
April 14th, 2009 Posted in General, Industry News
Kanye West performs at KROQ’s Almost Acoustic
Brushing aside disputes between YouTube and music societies, Universal Music Group – the world’s largest music company – has just announced that it is going to be partnering with the video sharing website on a new venture.
The upcoming site, called VEVO, will give people “premium” access to the whole of UMG’s video catalogue – which includes musicians like Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Eminem, Sting and the Killers – as well as let them syndicate and share material elsewhere.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said that he was “committed to promoting greater innovation and choice” – in what some will see as a sideswipe at rivals like Apple’s iTunes (certainly, Google doesn’t very often partner with companies in this way). The company, he added, was “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”.
Of course “premium” means you’ll have to pay for the privilege – so it seems there’s a flavour of iTunes music video downloads here. But otherwise, details of the deal are a little fuzzy.
At the moment, the Vevo website is pretty sparse – carrying just a logo and a box for submitting your email address. It also links to the project’s Twitter account, which merely carries a message saying “Welcome to VEVO. Thanks for following. We’ll keep you posted.”
Still, the silence didn’t stop amazingly optimistic prediction from those involved.
“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,” said Universal boss Doug Morris. “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.”
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