Vevo on Thursday announced major changes to its platform. In a nutshell, it’s abandoning plans to build a music video platform outside of YouTube.
Vevo on Thursday announced major changes to its platform. In a nutshell, it’s abandoning plans to build a music video platform outside of YouTube.
Vevo, an abbreviation for “Video EVOlution,” launched in late 2009 as a joint venture between the Big Three recording companies – Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group – for the purpose of streaming music videos.
The service has syndicated videos on YouTube but also operates its own branded mobile apps and a consumer-facing website. Moving forward, however, the venture said it will phase out certain “elements” of its platform and continue to offer its catalog of premium music videos and original content to a growing audience on YouTube.
As Variety highlights, the change in strategy probably isn’t all that surprising given the company’s recent management shakeup. Former CEO Erik Huggers departed in December and was followed a month later by head of product Mark Hall. The site reported last month that CTO Alex Nunes left “in recent weeks,” prompting the company to reduce staff across its product and engineering teams. Vevo said at the time that the cuts allowed for greater focus to drive increased growth in the commercial and promotional value of videos.
Vevo said it plans to continue to invest in original content and “new formats” they plan to roll out shortly.
