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Vevo Launches, Already One of the Biggest Video Sites in the US

May get 400 million streams in the first month

Dec 10, 2009 08:42 GMT  ·  By
Vevo may get 400 million streams in the first month
   Vevo may get 400 million streams in the first month

The label-backed music video site Vevo has finally launched and it's off to a good start, in terms of traffic anyway. So much traffic in fact that the service has been rocky for several hours after launch though things should be smoother at this point. The site has been in the works for a couple of years now and features videos from three of the four major music labels though the fourth, Warner Music Group, may joint at some point and is said to be in talks.

It took a while, but it looks like the music industry is finally looking ahead instead of clinging to its old ways, though it remains to be seen if it can manage to create an experience geared towards the fans rather than their wallets. For now, Vevo is claiming that the fans come first and that it will follow Hulu's model in this respect, by putting revenue in the back seat, at least until the site can establish itself as the best way to watch music videos online.

And it may just manage that, if only because it's becoming the only place to watch music videos. One of the greatest moves the joint venture pulled off was great support from YouTube, which will not only provide the technology for the site but will also send it a huge amount of traffic. Most music videos which YouTube hosted so far, 85 percent, will now be hosted on Vevo and users will be redirected from the Google site.

Vevo now expects about 400 million videos to be streamed in the first month, putting it the top 10 video sites in the US from the get go and in sight of the top three. Viacom sites got 407 million streams in October, according to numbers from comScore, Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) 446 million and Microsoft sites about 451 million. If traffic takes off after this first month, it may become the third largest video site in the US in just a few months. It may be a while until it catches up with Hulu, which got 855 million streams in October, but YouTube is in a league of its own with over 10 billion videos streams, though that number will see a dip now that it sends some of its users to Vevo.