Vevo

Name	VEVO
Logo
Url	vevo.com
Alexa	3,031
Commercial	Yes
Type	Video hosting service
Location	Mountain View, California, United States and Minato, Tokyo, Japan
Owner	Universal Music Group Sony Music Entertainment Abu Dhabi Media Company
Launch date	(United States and Canada)
Slogan	"Music Evolution Revolution!"

Vevo, stylized as VEVO, is a music video website. It is a joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Abu Dhabi Media with EMI licensing its content to the group without taking an ownership stake. The service was launched officially on 8 December 2009. The videos on VEVO are syndicated across the web, with Google and VEVO sharing the advertising revenue.

VEVO offers music videos from three of the 'big four' major record labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI. Warner Music Group was initially reported to be considering hosting its content on VEVO, but subsequently formed a rival alliance with MTV Networks. There are currently around 23,000 videos available on VEVO.

Development

The concept for VEVO was described as being a Hulu for music videos, To this end VEVO censors the content of some of its videos for language, to make them more acceptable to advertising partners such as McDonalds. The site's other revenue sources include a merchandise store and referral links to purchase viewed songs on Amazon MP3 and iTunes. Universal acquired the domain name vevo.com on 20 November 2008. Sony Music Entertainment reached a deal to add its content to the site in June 2009. The site went live on December 8th, 2009, and that same month became the number 1 most visited music site in the US, overtaking MySpace Music.

In August 2010, VEVO introduced a free application for the Apple iPhone that allows users to stream videos in the VEVO catalog and create playlists. Extending into connected devices, VEVO launched a channel on Google TV and an application on Boxee. Vevo is now also available for Android phones. The company says that launching on other mobile platforms and connected devices is imminent.

Availability

The vevo.com website and iPhone app are currently not available outside the United States and Canada. The website was scheduled to go worldwide in 2010, but it was still not available outside North America. Vevo's official blog cited licensing issues for the delay in the worldwide rollout. Some of VEVO's videos on YouTube are viewable by users in other countries, while others will produce the message "This video contains content from VEVO, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

Notes and references

Notes

a. The VEVO "coming soon" page currently states: "VEVO is committed to making all of its videos available worldwide. To make that happen, we must work through a range of business and legal issues. Please know that we are working diligently to make this happen. Our team at VEVO knows that Music is a truly global experience and that there are many people outside of the United States & Canada who would enjoy access to the VEVO video library and we will work as hard as we can to expand the availability of our service."

References

External links

Category:Google services Category:Universal Music Group Category:YouTube Category:Music websites Category:Internet properties established in 2009