In December 2009, two of the most powerful record labels threw a party in New York with Bono as a prominent figure. They were celebrating the launch of Vevo, an ambitious commitment to make up for lost ground on the internet and to monetize the music videos that were being played massively
without them seeing a weight.
The music industry was going through a rough time. Record sales were plummeting due to piracy and uncontrolled digitization. YouTube accumulated hundreds of millions of views without paying the labels almost anything, which generated a lot of anger.
Doug Morris, CEO of Universal at the time, realized the potential when he saw his grandson watching commercialized music videos. He pushed to change the situation and reached an agreement with Google. This is how Vevo, an acronym for “Video Evolution”, was born
.
The launch and initial boom
Universal, Sony and EMI were the main founders, with Warner joining later. YouTube provided mass distribution and both sides sold advertising. The result was immediate: in its first month, it became the most visited music site in the United States, surpassing Myspace
.
The numbers were impressive. The CPM of the music videos went from 3 dollars to more than 30 dollars in a few years. In 2012, it accumulated 41 billion views annually and in 2013 it surpassed MTV in digital audience. The Vevo Certified for artists who reached 100 million views became a cultural success label
.
However, the model had an underlying problem. Although it had a turnover of 250 million dollars in 2013, more than 90% was distributed between labels, Google and publishers. Vevo was at a loss and functioned more like an advertising manager than as an independent company
.
Attempts at independence and the final coup
In 2014 they sought to sell it for close to 1 billion dollars, but there were no interested parties. They then tried to reduce dependence on YouTube with their own apps for mobile phones and connected TVs, in addition to a paid subscription service. That project was canceled in 2017
.
The end came in 2018 when YouTube migrated subscribers from Vevo channels to its Official Artist Channels and relaunched YouTube Music. Paradoxically, Vevo had achieved accounting balance that year, but it no longer made sense
to maintain the structure.
Today Vevo didn't completely disappear. It migrated to connected television and FAST channels, with a library of more than 900,000 video clips and about 25,000 million monthly views. It is, in a way, what MTV wanted to be but on the internet: free music financed by advertising.
His legacy is mixed. It established the standard for official HD video clips on YouTube, helped to monetize the format and showed that labels could negotiate with platforms. However, the music videos evolved the other way around, with viral choreographies on TikTok that no one expected at that party in 2009
.
