VEVO: it's all about control

Submitted by David Akermanis on December 9, 2009 - 4:36pm

Have you tried VEVO yet?

According to Google's Eric Schmidt it will "revolutionize the music industry by finally allowing it to make money online". Sheryl Crow says it will put money back in the hands of artists. Bono calls it a "new model for the music business".

I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear: Sure, VEVO is indicative of shift for the recording industry, or at least 4 out of the 5 major music labels - but the model isn't new, and it won't put money back in the hands of musicians. VEVO is all about control. Why?

Gatekeeping
The closed nature of VEVO reduces the noise around the big labels' video content. It's tough for the four big major-label conglomerates (Sony, Universal, and EMI) to compete for attention on YouTube and now they won't have to go head-to-head with Maru the cat or other user-generated content.

Advertising
They call it "an MTV for the digital age", and it certainly has it's parallels. You, the user, are forced to watch a short advertisement before every video you watch.

What the labels are hoping to accomplish here is the ability to command higher CPM's for advertisements displayed against their content - nothing more.

In a nutshell...
The big four want to make every penny that is generated against their content. Similar to the complaints that newspapers levy against Google News, they'd like to be the exclusive gateway to their content. And why not? Attention is worth more than copies now right? VEVO is an attempt to pull all this content in to one place so they can sell more ads and make a ton of money.

My question is, what's in it for the user? What about you? Have you tried VEVO yet? Share your thoughts!

My apologies for the lame Ghostbusters joke ;)