Wesley Verhoeve

Another week, another announcement from VEVO touting their views as the highest among “music video viewers”, proudly mentioning they even beat MTV at their own game. VEVO is a music video destination built in partnership with Youtube/Google, and in part owned by Universal Music. Universal Music recently pulled all their videos from MTV.com. VEVO now brags about having more music video viewers” than MTV. Sounds like yet another music industry pissing match.

The Major Labels have aways been resentful of MTV for creating a media empire, crumbling as it is, on the backs of content they paid for and then provided free of charge (well, except they recouped the cost from artists). Other VEVO owners and stakeholders include Sony Music,CBS and EMI. Mashable shares the graphic below to illustrate the view per destination.

If you’re wondering why Youtube isn’t on this graph, then you’ve stumbled on my main issue with these view numbers. VEVO’s views include all of Youtube’s views (including unofficial videos), but if a content owner (artist or label) wants a video put up on VEVO then you are required to remove it from any Youtube account first. VEVO is trying to have their cake and eat it too. The good folks over at Mashable did a little digging and it also turns out that VEVO’s views also include high traffic artist sites like LadyGaga.com. VEVO themselves provided this horribly rendered graphic (screencapping Excel?) with more numbers, listing pirate video site World Star Hip Hop, featuring videos and babies sitting in traffic, as the third most visited.

Now lets talk about what actually matters, because it’s not whether VEVO or MTV is the number one music video destination online. The real topic is that most people looking for a music video will go straight to Youtube. You’ll be hardpressed to find any average Joe or Jill that visits VEVO directly to look for music videos. It’s just not proven to be a real destination yet. The only way people end up on VEVO is by searching for videos on one of the true video destinations, Youtube, and being linked over. And that’s the truth. VEVO is a non-brand at this point in time, and that’s ok, but lets be honest about it rather than double-speaking one’s way through a press release to increase your CPM advertising rates. VEVO’s advertising rates are well north of Youtube’s rates, because they provide a more targeted audience of video viewers than youtube, and that is what this is all about.

I would like to challenge VEVO to increase the quality of their customer’s experience as a way to grow their brand and true visitor rate instead. Make the videos load faster, avoid down time, partner up with creators like the people behind the Take Away shows, stream more live shows, give artists more creative freedom and stop with the silly restrictions like not allowing ending credits for music videos. No one cares about these fake victory press releases, and they won’t do any long-term good. They may satisfy your execs and shareholders temporarily, but they won’t drive traffic in the least. In the mean time, we once again find ourselves missing out on revenue generated by music through third parties and our fans, until we stop acting like ostriches, head in sand.Tweet