Universal, YouTube Collaboration To Be Run By Someone Who Sees The Bigger Picture

from the a-good-first-step dept

At the beginning of March, I questioned the wisdom of Universal Music and YouTube teaming up to create a separate site just for Universal Music, called Vevo. While I thought it could be interesting, it really depended on the execution, and the early talk about it seemed to miss the point. That is, it said that YouTube would supply the "technology" and Universal would supply the music. Of course, what that's missing is that much of the value in YouTube isn't in the technology (which many others have replicated), but in the community. So, if Vevo was to get anywhere, it would need to recognize that fact, rather than simply looking at YouTube as a tech vendor.

At the end of March, in a totally separate post, I wrote about my surprise at seeing my fellow keynote presenter at the Leadership Music Digital Summit, Rio Caraeff of Universal Music, present a reasonable vision for where the music industry needed to be: getting away from selling "music" and in creating better, more valuable experiences that simply can't be replicated by file sharing. This was in stark contrast to what Universal Music's own CEO had been saying for years. While Caraeff admitted that it was still a struggle to get this message through to everyone at Universal, he believed in it strongly.

That's why it's noteworthy that Caraeff has now been put in charge of the Vevo project. I'm still not convinced it's anything more than a boondoggle that will go nowhere quickly, but putting Caraeff in charge of it immediately makes it a much more interesting project to follow. The real question is what he does with it, and whether the bosses back at Universal Music actually give him enough free reign to let him turn the site into what it needs to be. I wish I could be optimistic, but given the major record labels' track record in dealing with such things, I still think the chances are pretty slim.

Filed Under: music, rio caraeff, videos
Companies: google, universal music, vevo, youtube