Universal Music Group and YouTube join to form Vevo.com

11 April 2009, Oliver @ 7:30 pm

For the last few months YouTube has been just another name being thrown around as a big, bad company involved in copyright scandals. Back in March, Universal Music Group chief Doug Morris stated that sites like YouTube and Myspace “are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.” Come on, seriously? Are major labels really that money hungry for every bottom dollar that they’re willing to limit their artist’s exposure to potential new fans? God forbid they give access to view music videos without proper compensation to record labels. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used YouTube as a resource for outsourcing new bands for myself, or as a means to get others hooked on to music they may have never heard otherwise.

Well, it seems the folks at Universal aren’t that dumb. It was just announced that they and YouTube have partnered up to launch a new video-sharing website named Vevo.com later this year, which will be powered by YouTube with content supplied by Universal. While still free to the general public, both will share in revenue generated by advertising. Content will also still be accessible through YouTube on a 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,” said Universal chief executive Doug Morris.

“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.”

As it stands, Universal’s YouTube channel is already the most watched on the site with over 3.5 billion views.

Google (owners of YouTube) CEO Eric Schmidt said they are “thrilled to be working with the Universal Music Group in what will surely be an exciting new service for consumers, advertisers, content creators and the music industry at large.”

In December, Warner Music Group pulled it’s videos from YouTube after no agreement could be reached on fees, while Sony Music Entertainment have recently worked out a new deal with YouTube this year.

As album sales have decreased, Universal has also been exploring new ventures with Myspace and Apple’s iTunes as a way to generate new forms of revenue. I guess it’s safe to say that cash really is king, and you have to do whatever to make yours. At least this time it doesn’t seem to be at the expense of the fans. Well, for now anyways.

AWmusic