Mar 17, 2011 14:20 GMT  ·  By

Vevo, the music video joint venture is ready for an international expansion and is heading to the UK, launching as soon as this month. After that, other launches in other regions and countries are planned. In 2011, Vevo will be made available in several European countries, the Middle East and North Africa and other regions.

The announcement was made at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit by VevoCEO Rio Caraeff, who said that the site was finally ready for an expansion.

The UK launch is coming this month and the Middle East and North Africa should follow soon. The second half of the year is targeted for the other regions.

Vevo was launched in late 2009 in the US. It quickly became one of the big players in online video and accounts for a significant chunk of video watched online in the US.

Music videos have been one the big promoters of online video and have always attracted some of the biggest audiences, or at least views. The most popular videos on YouTube, by a huge margin, have been music videos for quite a while now.

While music videos are inherently attractive and popular, the fact that users listen to them on repeat until they get tired of the song contributes greatly to the number of views. For the younger generation YouTube is one of the main sometimes only way they consume music.

Vevo's success can't be attributed to the content alone, it owns quite a lot to YouTube which is providing the technology and the infrastructure in exchange for the video catalogue.

Vevo is a joint venture of Universal Music and Sony Music along with Google, via YouTube, and the Abu Dhabi Media Company which provided most of the funding.

With the help of YouTube, it was able to attract a big audience in a short while, since any music search for artists represented by the labels licensing content to YouTube would be redirected to the Vevo sub-site.