At first glance, it seems straightforward: The world’s biggest music company and the world’s biggest video site team up to make a new music video hub. But Vevo, the arrangement announced by Google’s YouTube and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group yesterday, isn’t quite as straightforward as the two companies made it sound.
The world’s largest video site and the world’s biggest music company are joining up. Google’s YouTube and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group will be launching a new site, dubbed VEVO, which will highlight UMG’s videos. This is essentially what I’ve been calling “YouTube Music,” and it’s been in the works since last fall; in March I reported that the two sides had basically hammered out a deal. It’s a pretty big deal for YouTube, the music business, and the rest of the media world.
Yesterday I noted that Apple and the big music labels had effectively raised prices at iTunes via a tiered system that priced most songs at 99 cents and many at $1.29. The question: Where are the cheap songs–the ones that the labels had promised to start selling for 69 cents? They’re coming, music label execs tell me. Just hold your horses.
Apple has finally rolled out the “flexible pricing” plan it announced earlier this year at its music store. If you’re a casual music consumer, and that phrase doesn’t mean anything to you, let me rephrase it: Many of your favorite songs will now cost 30 percent more at iTunes.
Video site Veoh, one of the biggest players in the “who will be the next YouTube” competition, is restructuring the company, laying off a good chunk of its staff and replacing CEO Steve Mitgang with founder Dmitry Shapiro. Shapiro says the company, which has been primarily focused on playing video and selling ads on its own site, will now be concentrating on a new “Video Compass” player that users will have to download onto their Web browsers in order to use.
The once-buzzy start-up isn’t on life support yet. But it sure could use some help–just like every other Web music player. I can confirm that the company has sought, and received, new terms from some of the big music labels, most notably Universal Music Group. One big label that hasn’t given imeem any concessions yet: Warner Music Group, which owns an equity stake in the company.
EMI Music Group, which sued Web music start-up Project Playlist nearly a year ago, has dropped its suit and will start providing its catalog to the site, which offers free streaming music. The settlement, in conjunction with an earlier deal struck with Sony’s Sony Music Entertainment, means that Project Playlist now has deals with two of the big four music labels. But Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group are still suing the company.
YouTube, the world’s biggest video site, and Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music label, are talking about creating a YouTube Music site. About time.
Like everyone else in the music business, Universal Music Group had a rough end to 2008. But compared to its peers, the largest music company in the world did all right. It attributes some of its success to marijuana enthusiast Lil Wayne.
Earlier this month the music business got a rare piece of good news: Apple announced that it had posted “record” sales at its iTunes music store around Christmas. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming: I’m seeing more and more evidence that Apple notwithstanding, the industry’s last few months were bad even by the industry’s own terrible standards.
In addition to offering songs from iTunes without DRM restrictions, Apple plans on selling songs to iPhone users “over the air”–that is, you can buy them directly from your handset, wherever you are. I’m told that Apple has struck deals with the major labels to start selling songs to iPhone 3G owners sometime this spring.
In 2007, Steve Jobs predicted that half the music offered at his iTunes store would be sold without digital rights management–the lock-and-key system that the music labels wrap their songs–by the end of that year. Better late than never: Apple finally has deals in place with three of the big music labels to sell DRM-free songs. In exchange, Jobs will give the labels some ability to introduce “flexible pricing,” a key demand for the industry.
Forget the blowup between Warner Music Group and Google over YouTube money: The big labels need to be on the world’s biggest video site, and YouTube could use the music videos. Which is why the solution may look very much like the arrangement the labels made with MySpace last year. Call it YouTube Music.
Four days after MySpace cut the legs out from under Project Playlist by disabling the music streaming service’s app, Facebook is following suit.
Warner Music Group’s videos are disappearing from YouTube. The move is a result of a breakdown in negotiations between Google and the music label over a licensing deal that was set to expire soon. Who actually made the move to drop the label’s content from the world’s biggest video site is a matter of dispute, though. Both sides are taking credit for the decision.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
