2010-05-10dated from the first comment; a lower bound

VEVO? VE-NO.

Published no later than May 10, 2010, dated from the first comment on the original post. Platforms and services described here have changed. This is kept as a record, not as current advice.

I was over in a friend’s house last night and the discussion was (as it invariably is) about music. The topic was Christina (or is that Xtina?) Aguilera’s comeback. Apparently it’s all very Lady Gaga. In any case, there being several laptops at hand connected to the homes super high speed wireless broadband, we went off on a trawl to search for Aguilera’s new single “Not Myself Tonight”.

I’d like to put this forward as a little case study as to how us 21st century kids look for music online: Firstly we went to YouTube. Well duh! As Peter has pointed out previously YouTube is the number one place internet users go to listen to music online. But no dice; instead we found an 18 second teaser video with Christina introducing the “exclusive” premiere of the video on Vevo.

Now, being involved in music marketing I’ve heard about Vevo. It’s the music industry’s solution to the “problem” of YouTube; because we all know that interested fans actively searching for your music online is a problem after all. Vevo hosts content from three of the “Big Four” record labels; Sony, Universal and EMI. Warner are not on board yet but they will surely join the party soon enough. For additional current industry context, see Pitchfork.

Though the video content is label-only the back end of the site is all managed and hosted by YouTube (well, they are the experts), who get a sizable chunk of the advertising revenue for their efforts. So essentially, Vevo is a controlled online environment owned by the top tier of the music industry who are filtering their “high quality” content away from the nasty common people who dare to make and upload their own videos and use copyrighted material as soundtracks.

So, we tried Vevo and here’s what we got: Yes, Vevo is still not available outside of the US and Canada. And although they are quoting the fairly impressive figure of 226 million video views in their first full month of operations this January, that figure includes the huge numbers of views, both in North America and internationally, which are coming from the “Vevo channels” on YouTube a weird half-way house for label content which will exist until agreements for all the territories are finalised and Vevo becomes truly global, which is due to happen sometime in 2010.

So, our quest for the be-chapped one’s new song still remained unfulfilled. Next we tried her own website, where we were greeted by this lovely pop-up. Yes, that’s a dead video link with a Buy button underneath. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the habit of paying good money to download a song I’ve never even been given the chance to listen to.

People listen to a song a few times, be that on the radio, online or because they’ve been exposed to it through friends, TV or the movies. They decide whether they like it or not and then they commit to purchase. I especially amn’t inclined to buy a single when I feel like I’m being excluded from seeing a particular video because I happen to live outside of North America.

I suggested we should check out Christina’s Myspace. I distinctly heard a guffaw from one of my friends. While Myspace is still a very important tool for musicians, this reaction is an indicator of the size of the gulf which now exists between Myspace and what should be its core target audience of online music consumers. While dynamic companies such as Facebook have evolved with their users and profited as a result, Myspace are floundering with reported losses of $150 million in the last quarter documented.

So we didn’t look at Myspace at all. Myspace (red) vs. Facebook (blue) pageviews in US March 08 – March 09