What is Vevo? It’s a destination provided by YouTube to find streaming music videos. Though Vevo is being hailed as “an MTV for the digital age,” I agree with Vozick-Levinson at EW when he says it’s “more like Hulu for music videos.” Sony, Universal, and EMI (where’s Warner Music Group at?) have teamed up to port all their artist’s music videos to Vevo. The site sports a large, high-quality video player (with HD support coming next year) and contains an index of the latest music videos. Take note that the current smorgasbord of videos is very limited; you’ll be hard-pressed to find older music videos, and forget about indie bands. Though the selection is very sparse and sporadic at the moment, give Vevo some time to grow (it just launched yesterday).
Here are some additional details from the Vevo launch event: 85% of all music videos will go through Vevo, the rest will live on YouTube; Vevo includes synchronized and integrated lyrics; the player serves ads based on aggregate usage; Vevo will load any time you search for artists on YouTube; Vevo will be a destination for exclusive premieres, now including brand new videos from 50 Cent, Mary J Blige and Mariah Carey.
Why Vevo? Three of the “big four” music labels believe that this new centralized location for music videos will result in ease for the user looking for music videos on the Internet, and, more importantly, high revenue from the slew of ads that play before (or dangle below) the majority of videos (again, think Hulu for music videos). Will it work..for the customers and the labels? Time will tell. For now, check it out for yourself and see what it’s all about.