All that Vevo ever was for me was a <i>quality seal</i> that guarantees that the video from an artist is official, when searching for a song on YouTube - i.e. it had good image and sound quality and it was indeed a video clip, not just an upload of the song with the album cover or crappy collage as image.<p>Never thought about it as a company with ambitions to challenge YouTube.
Vevo was a partially thought-out venture, executed well but not well enough. It was always hampered by the studios' stubborn direction: licensing limitations that kept it out of lots of markets, not enough cross-promotion through sponsorships, retail channels, or advertising, and intentional lack of scope to avoid cannibalizing music sales. And they were hamstrung by the legacy of their initial decision to syndicate to YouTube: most people probably discovered the name 'Vevo' through seeing their watermark on music videos posted to YouTube, but subsequently had little reason to explore what Vevo is or does. Not that they missed anything: Vevo didn't do anything that YouTube didn't already do.<p>They wanted the cake both ways: leverage YouTube's audience and discovery, while running a not-at-all-captive, ad-supported competitor just for the sake of perceived control and leverage. That's cute.<p>If it wasn't such a half-assed venture, Vevo could've become the single most valuable subscription music streaming destination: a captive Spotify for daily use, with music videos on demand. But studios couldn't commit to the serious business decision of withdrawing their licensed content from other platforms that have already built an audience. Instead, now they've abandoned their ambition to have their own digital distribution solution, and have decided that focusing on licensing and revenue sharing is their preferred outcome.<p>It's interesting to compare this to TV, where the major incumbents are still interested in gating their content to their respective captive distribution portals.
When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people. I am not surprised that Google was able to manipulate them so well.
I happened to have a chat with someone who knows what happened first hand - between YouTube and the record labels oligopoly, they could hardly develop as a company and not a mediator, sandwiched between giants on both content production and content distribution.
I was always under the impression that Vevo was owned by YouTube/Google. I had no idea they had plans on anything other than "official music videos" on YouTube.
The biggest threat to YouTube is YouTube. Censorship is getting out of hand and demonetizing/banning sucessful tubers is making people ask questions.<p>Questions like: Should I continue to invest in this platform or start moving my viewers elsewhere?<p>Personally, if I had a following, I’d be getting my branded media site up and running. I’d continue to post teaser content to YouTube, but host my full content on servers I control.
Vevo's post [0] about stopping their service is a priceless list of bullshit bingo:<p>> At Vevo, our objective is to grow the commercial and promotional value of music videos, fostering deep connections between artists and fans.<p>> To be most effective in achieving those goals, we will phase out elements of our owned and operated platforms.<p>> Going forward, Vevo will remain focused on engaging the biggest audiences and pursuing growth opportunities.<p>[0]: <a href="https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-operated-platforms/" rel="nofollow">https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-...</a>
No, a reaction cobbled together to try and maintain control of a no longer releevabt business model was never a threat to anyone other than investors whose money music publishing industry is wasting.<p>It could only ever fail cause its real customer is music publishers and not music consumers.
The newest threat to Youtube is Youtube itself. Many content makers are complaining about the AI of Youtube that misunderstands text and videos and forces content makers to take down their own videos. I have also seen channels go down and the owners complaining since they cannot communicate with a real person and have no explanation why their channel is taken down.
I've always thought the music industry would be hitting this point in their life 20 years ago if not for the constant format changes. How many people replaced their collection over and over through the vinyl, 8 track, cassette and cd transformations. Now in it's final format change to downloading the replacement of collections is over and the industry is in trouble as it can't adjust to the lower gross. Depending on a single source for video, in this case Youtube, is going to be a mistake in the long run. Too much power in too few hands.
Vevo chose Youtube as a distribution channel. That was both the right and wrong move for them, but in the end it worked out pretty well for consumers, with the wider-scoped/user-driven concept winning over the media site.
I wonder if this means on the backend the post production houses will just send the masters to YouTube instead of over to Vevo, only for vevo to upload them to YouTube. Would be much cheaper if vevo didn't ingest every video.
This is another clickbait variant: postmortem clickbaits.<p>e.g: "My startup failed", "Why I quit <company>", etc...<p>I am passing on this one since my common sense tells me VEVO and YouTube are vastly different services.