Vevo, the collaboration of Universal Music Group and YouTube, is going to be a site that streams videos from various artists like U2, and is designed to make money. What?
Vivendi CEO said this, about the old model of giving away music videos to MTV and YouTube just as promotional material. "We used to do lots of great artistic videos that we gave away to MTV and other people for free. We didn't get paid. Now it's becoming a profit center."
By this they mean that they're going to split advertising revenue between YouTube and Universal, and not that they're going to charge you 5 cents per video.
Our question is though, when YouTube already has the same videos, why would you ever move over to Vevo? What's the benefit? YouTube just got to the point where you can fetch just about any video whenever you want, but copyright claims like this one seem to have forced people to go elsewhere. I guess that's the point? Kill off YouTube as a music video destination so that music video producers, the studios, can get a cut? [Bloomberg]