YouTube has been one of the prime locations for music buffs around the world to view music videos and listen to music.
Many record companies and individual artists use YouTube to promote their products, but the vast majority of music videos uploaded to YouTube come from users.
Users who have been searching for music on YouTube that is distributed by the major record labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music and EMI might have already noticed that something has changed today.
Songs by popular artists like Lady Gaga, the Beastie Boys or Michael Jackson show now up with a Vevo tagging that is asking users to visit the Vevo website.
Those YouTube users who wonder why should read the announcement over at the official YouTube blog. Google has apparently struck a deal with record labels which combines YouTube technology and the record labels catalog at the new destination.
You can play the moves on YouTube still, provided that the service is available in the country you are connecting from.
While it might make sense to build a new service that is specialized in music videos, its current incarnation is everything but perfect. Here are a few reasons why:
- Vevo is only available to users from the United States. The funny thing is that it is still possible to view those music videos on YouTube even if you are not from the United States. On Vevo however, music is limited to users from certain regions of the world. Update: Availability improved over the years.
- It seems that the transfer to Vevo has erased previous comments and ratings of some videos.
- Vevo seems to come with additional advertisement and a few features like displaying song lyrics and artist profiles
The strategy is not really clear at this point. It could be that the parties have planned to move all of the music videos completely to Vevo so that YouTube users move to the new site for their music fix. That is, if they are from the US.
More likely is however that the record labels hope to push Vevo using YouTube’s vast user numbers without losing any of the revenue videos on YouTube are generating for them.
Have you tried Vevo yet? What’s your experience?