re:boot

Doug Morris and the birth of Vevo [Financial Times]

The symbiotic rise of MTV and the promotional music video are the stuff of legend.  With the formation of the first nationally broadcast music video cable channel, low-key, often vanity video projects became one of the most cost effective ways to promote music to a national audience, soaring beyond touring, and equaling radio.

Those days are long since past.  With little economic return from the sale of recorded music, video has become a costly (though increasingly less-so in a budget constrained environment) accessory, better serving the promotion of touring, tweets, ancillary marketing, artist branding, and occasionally… music sales.

As video disappeared from MTV, replaced by reality TV programming, music video found new homes on YouTube and a multitude of other outlets, often paired with advertising, that returned no revenue to labels.. and very indirectly to artists.

It was the realization that there was revenue to be captured from the development of appropriate big budget and advertising paired with video from top artists that gave birth to Vevo - in effect a MTV for the internet age, but in this case owned and operated by the record labels.  The goal of Vevo was to provide direct monetization of music video with the returns going directly to labels that funded it.  Love or hate the labels… it makes sense and seems fair…

FT provides a decent, if glossy, overview…  but gives little credit to Rio Caraeff the experienced digital executive who actually built Vevo - Morris can take credit for writing the check.

[Financial Times] read on..