14 DAY TRIAL // Universal Music Group and YouTube plan to launch a new music video site called Vevo later this year and have been in talks with the other three major music labels for licensing and partnership. The negotiations have come to fruition, at least on one side, as Sony Music Entertainment has announced it will join the venture.
Vevo was made public earlier this year as a video site specifically for music videos but only Universal was onboard from the beginning. YouTube will provide the technical know-how and infrastructure and the music labels will provide the content. The service will be ad supported and the groups will share the revenue.
Sony is smaller than Universal but it is still bringing with it some big names like Bruce Springsteen and Eminem. The other two major labels haven't made any pledges yet but talks are ongoing between the parties and we might see some more announcements as the launch date approaches.
Vevo was envisioned by Universal Music CEO Doug Morris and will feature music videos as well as reality shows or video blogs, all revolving around artists. "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," Morris said in a statement, presumably referring to the traffic Universal sees at its YouTube channel. "And this traffic represents the most sought after demographic for advertisers, especially as advertising dollars continue their shift from old media to new."
The move to create a new site might seem a little odd for Google as it is bound to drive a lot of traffic from YouTube to the new site but considering that YouTube has been losing money ever since Google acquired it in 2005 it makes sense. Today Universal's YouTube channel is the largest on the site by a large margin with almost 4 billion views. The challenge now is getting those people to use Vevo instead of YouTube but both companies are confident that this will not be a problem.