Vevo To Shut Down Site, Giving In To YouTube Empire (rollingstone.com)

Vevo, the video-hosting service founded in 2009 as a joint venture between the big three record companies, is shutting down. The company announced in a blog post Thursday that it is shuttering its mobile apps and website, and that "going forward, Vevo will remain focused on engaging the biggest audiences and pursuing growth opportunities." Vevo is almost entirely succumbing to YouTube. Rolling Stone reports: The major record labels set up Vevo -- an abbreviation for "video evolution" -- in 2009 as a designated streaming service for music videos that would ideally bring in greater revenue from more high-end advertisers. Via a distribution deal with YouTube, it received a cut of revenue from putting its music videos on the Google-owned site. But YouTube's might has grown: The video-streaming service recently took Vevo's branding off its music videos, while also securing permission under a new licensing deal to sell Vevo's clips directly to advertisers, cutting out the smaller company's sales force. Though Vevo has been trying to peel away from its dependence on YouTube by touting its own suite of apps and offerings for years, it seems those efforts haven't been met with much success. "Our catalog of premium music videos and original content will continue to reach a growing audience on YouTube and we are exploring ways to work with additional platforms to further expand access to Vevo's content," the company said in its blog post. Vevo users on its website and Android, iOS and Windows Mobile apps will receive a tool to migrate their playlists to YouTube.

Comments

Well, there goes the competition...

[dublin]

After Google's extremely heavy-handed demonitization and de-platforming of content producers that simply violate their increasingly puritan ideas of Political Correctness (viz, Dennis Prager's Prager U, etc.), I was really hoping to see the alternative video sites like Vevo start to take up the slack.
With the death of Vevo, which was clearly one of YouTube's largest viable competitors, does a free and open video platform alternative to YouTube even exist anymore? (Seriously, I want answers/suggestions here...)

Re:Well, there goes the competition...

[93 Escort Wagon]

With the death of Vevo, which was clearly one of YouTube's largest viable competitors, does a free and open video platform alternative to YouTube even exist anymore?

What about Vimeo?

Re:Well, there goes the competition...

[tepples]

Vimeo's guidelines impose some practical problems. The biggest is a ban on "commercial content". I failed to find a bright line between permitted "showcase your creative work" and prohibited "Product demos and tutorials". Another is that only a video's author can upload it, not just someone with permission to upload on the author's behalf. This means videos created by a minor or by someone behind a harshly capped Internet connection can't be uploaded at all.

Re:Well, there goes the competition...

[cdsparrow]

I guess it's all up to pornhub now...

Obligatory: Never Heard of It

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever a service shuts down somebody always has to post that they've never heard of it. In this thread I shall be that person.

Wait

[lyovushka]

Vevo had a video-hosting website? Never heard about it.

Re: Wait

[Nidi62]

I've watched numerous vevo videos on YouTube, but I never knew they had a standalone website

Re: Wait

[jetkust]

Vevo was king as far as music videos. Not sure how that happened. But by the time I actually had interest in music videos again, you pretty much could watch all the Vevo music videos on YouTube, which was convenient. I guess that convenience killed Vevo...

Re: Wait

[Opportunist]

How that happened is easy. By being owned by the rights owners who DMCA'ed everyone else trying to show their video into oblivion. If you have no competition, it doesn't matter how crippled, censured and low-res your content is.

This is not good

[AbRASiON]

As per all Youtube articles the past few months, we NEED a competitor.

I do very much wish, these smaller groups would band together with a porn group or something and make an alternative. Youtube continues to censor people who don't fit the current groupthink narrative.

While "SJW values" are infact generally a positive thing for the world, heavy handed pushing of them, 'opposite racism' (fuck whitey) and what have you is becoming quite excessive across the Internet. Main issues being people like Twitter, Youtube are /almost/ *entirely fine* with people outright saying deplorable things about whites and or males, but if you say something even remotely controversial in another direction you're taken offline. It need not even be harmful or racist, just to be perceived as against the current hard left groupthink.

Youtube is regularly censoring people like this. CountDankula for example made a particularly hysterical mockery video of his pet Pug doing a nazi salute when he says "seig heil" to the pug. Is it dark humour? Hell yes. Is it utterly hilarious? I believe so.
Monty Python, Mel Brooks would've done that kind of thing without an issue.

Long story short is people on the Youtube platform, who have built an ongoing living and income can be destroyed at the drop of a hat, due to algorithm changes and censorship. Be it the visibility of your videos or just outright de-monetization (but Google will gladly still run ads on the video, just the person who created it, doesn't get a thing)

I don't think we need a group of gentlemen (or women) in white bedsheets saying "we must kill all the " but there's certainly a line of centrist (not even right wing) talk which is being suppressed. Because if you're not far left nowadays, YOU'RE A NAZI.

Long story short. We need a competitor, to keep Google in shape and that's going to require some serious resources unfortunately.

Re:This is not good

[fafalone]

I have to disagree that most "SJW values" are a good thing for the world.
-Cracking down on 'hate speech' is a limitation on free speech that apart from being inherently wrong, the laws they seek will absolutely be used to silence views that are not hateful. Take one of the popular targets that SJWs want shut down because "hate speech": Charles Murray. The complaint is that simply acknowledging racial IQ differences is hateful, which is absurd. Even if you disagree with some of his conclusions, it's a valid point for debate. Then you have the much bigger problem, what will Republicans consider hate speech when they wield the power of hate speech laws?
-SJWs believe that a meritocracy is a tool of white male supremacy. So their solution is to simply discriminate based on race in the opposite direction. Lessen the requirements for everyone except white men and Asians. The problems with this should be obvious to anyone still capable of critical thought; it could even wind up costing lives, for example FDNY not requiring women to meet the physical standards. We should address the underlying reasons for inequality where possible, but acknowledge that there are differences and it's ultimately not right to say "because of the color of your skin or whats between your legs, you're held to a different standard".
-SJWs believe political correctness is essential; that there's no room for jokes that offend a disadvantaged group, and that inadvertent 'microaggressions' are worthy of punishment. It's elevating the feelings of the most sensitive person above everyone elses. That's what's behind a lot of the YouTube et al. situations; those most easily offended determine what's acceptable.
-A core tenet of SJW belief is that due process is a tool of the patriarchy when it's applied to sexual matters, and should be discarded. Guilt is absolute upon accusation, and the accuser is not open to challenge. Factual inaccuracies in the story don't matter, and no statute of limitations should exist. Further, if a slightly buzzed woman and completely wasted man have sex, the man is responsible for his actions, the woman is not, and it was rape despite her initiating. Consent is something that can be withdrawn retroactively-- one college has even updated its rules to reflect this.
-In education, SJWs show little interest in boosting minorities, instead preferring to achieve equality by reducing the quality of education for high achievers, because they're disproportionately white and Asian.

Many SJW values are toxic and regressive. They're not about equality, they're about punishing the inequality of the past by transferring the groups who benefit from it. What's worse, they label people like me, who favor color-blind merit-based systems, extensive reform to the criminal justice and education policies that maintain inequality, even full trans bathroom and equal protection rights.. and spent this entire week on /. railing against the right and police abuse.. as no different than a nazi because I defend free speech, due process, and evidence-based group differences existing (though largely irrelevant)... and if SJWs know anything, it's that all those must be sacrificed.
What's good for the world is equality, where ones race doesn't matter, where ones sex/gender doesn't matter. Where we're all just people. Where everyone can voice their ideas, and everyone receives equal treatment under the law. SJWs don't want that.

Re:This is not good

[tlhIngan]

Vevo is not a competitor to YouTube.

It's actually a site that the music industry created to host music videos. Yes, the music industry. Presumably they had plans for it, probably some sort of subscription thing, but it never panned out.

Its a music industry thing because on YouTube, you'll find lots of "VEVO" titled channels (usually like ArtistVEVO), which are the "official" music videos of the artist.

Here's a nice video that explains what Vevo actually was:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As for your other stuff - there is plenty of competition - Vimeo and DailyMotion are the bigger competitors to YouTube, and have been around just as long. There's also LiveLeak and others. And there are plenty more that launched since the "adpocalypse" started.

The only thing you need to know is the problem is not YouTube. YouTube censored few videos, the vast majority of them are de-monetized. As in the creators no longer make money from them, and the simple reason for that is because no advertiser is willing to advertise on those channels.

Back before the President made it his personal goal to find new ways to offend people, nobody cared. But it all changed when raping became "not a big deal" or "everyone throws themselves at me" and the like, and then advertisers suddenly gave a big crap about where their ads ended up. It caused YouTube to lose a LOT of big name advertisers (often with the "we're re-evaluating our online marketing strategies" comment, or "we're not happy with our online marketing return on investments").

Then it happened again, and YouTube lost even MORE advertisers.

It's caused the entire internet industry to have to re-evaluate and make tough decisions because you have to remember ad people have the thinnest skins around, and unless you're charging money from viewers directly (like some of the new sites do), or using those smaller scammy ad sites (you know, the ones that advertise on torrent sites and bring plenty of pop ups and malware and fake download buttons), there really isn't much to go around

Yes, there are a few that charge per view - even one I think is blockchain based.

You might call it the YouTube bubble bursting - the era of any content on YouTube and monetizing it all is over. YouTube has to implement even more rules because the few advertisers left over has to support the site, so the rules for monetization have gotten stricter.

Unfortunately, it also had the side effect of some reputable channels chasing "easy click bait" money now too, which I really hate.

Re:This is not good

[Kiuas]

Long story short is people on the Youtube platform, who have built an ongoing living and income can be destroyed at the drop of a hat, due to algorithm changes and censorship.

This is true, the 'adpocalypse' has indeed made a huge dents in the income of many youtubers. But keep in mind that's what's behind this: the advertisers themselves.

Google is an advertising company that happens to own a video platform and a search engine and a bunch of other stuff to help spread those ads, but at the core of the revenue is ads. What's happened with Youtube is that they got instantly scared when they lost advertisers because companies that are strict about their imagine do not want to be affiliated with content that they deem damaging to their brand. This is why they apparently chose to be extra-paranoid and demonetize everything that's could be perceived as 'problematic', but not by themselves or even the consumers but the advertisers. That's who their paying customer is, and that's who they care the most about.

Behind all of this is a conflict between the way advertising has traditionally been done and the way it's evolved online. If I buy ad-space on a tv-network or a newspaper, I have a good amount of control over what kind of content my ads are shown. However online the targeting is done based on the audience and not the content itself. So instead of saying: 'I want this ad to run for 3 weeks in this timeslot" companies can now say: 'I want to show this ads to men aged 20-35 who're interested in X, Y and Z." This is obviously better in the sense that it allows for a more fine-grained targeting of the campaign, but the tradeoff is that it surrenders all control of the content the ads are played next to. A person in your target demographic might be watching music videos and cute cat videos or they might be watching some radical political content and this is scaring the marketing people who want to protect their brand and avoid 'Coca-cola advertising next to ISIS videos' -'scandals'. This is in fact close to what started the so called 'Adpocalypse' last year: a bunch of big.brand advertisers got spooked because their ads were being run over racist content. Quoting from the link:

The YouTube Adpocalypse is a site-wide term emerging from the March-May 2017 advertiser boycott on YouTube.

The boycott arose from advertisements being played on the video, "Chief Keef dancing to Alabama N*gger", and other extremist content, leading to the UK Government, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Johnson & Johnson, and many major brands pulling their advertisements from YouTube.

Know what that meant? Revenues dropping across the board, money being lost. And with big brands like these, we're talking about more than just a few bucks.

This is why it has to be understood that this problem is not Google/Youtube-specific, it's advertiser specific. Obviously Google or any online platform would like to run as much ads on whatever content that they could, because more ads=more money. If you think the guys over at Youtube are excited about decreasing monetization think again. But the customer is always right, and if the hand that feeds you says either you do something about policing the kind of content the ads are getting played next to or you lose their business, what do you think they're going to do? A competing service on its own will not help because it will run into the same problem once it becomes big enough: if you want your platform to be profitable and ad-supported, you're going to have to kiss the ring of the advertisers or see them take their business elsewhere.

Before advertisers start trusting consumers to understand that they have not hand-picked the videos that the ads are played next to, this will not change. In the meanwhile, what Youtube could at least do is give the advertiser the choice of opting-in to the algorithm. There are plenty of companies out th

Re:This is not good

[No Longer an AC]

And yet I am reluctant to criticize your post for fear of losing Karma, but here goes anyway.

For one thing, if I'm not mistaken, YouTube did not censor CountDankula. It was his own government that did that. YT is fine with teaching your dog Nazi salutes.

In fact, it's still up on YT:

M8 Yer Dugs A Nazi

I would agree 100% with you if you were arguing that UK or EU laws go way too far in restricting free speech but you're arguing that YT censored that video when they didn't.

But there are other examples where arguably YT and others have been "unfair" and have censored videos, often ones which are merely politically incorrect rather than outright racist or promoting violence, what about them?

I say, they can find their own platform to host their material. These are private businesses refusing their right to refuse service to those who they don't want on their platform even if their reasons seem "unfair" to you.

They owe no particular user anything.

Fox News has removed some of my comments. Sites like Breitbart and RT are even more aggressive about removing comments that don't agree with their agenda.

And let's not ignore the outright lies against sites like YT. I've seen multiple people (or at least multiple accounts) whine that YT removed all the gun videos. That simply is NOT true. I don't doubt that they removed some and that maybe they were heavy-handed in doing so but it's certainly not a violation of free speech.

Whether they're doing this out of some kind of SJW political correctness or because they are simply bowing to the pressure of advertisers who don't want to be associated with the likes of Richard Spencer doesn't really matter. It's their platform.

And how can you make a living on YT, but not be popular enough to host your own website? Maybe instead of complaining that YT denied them a soapbox on their property they should be grateful that YT allowed them any soapbox in the first place even if they eventually were kicked off. Without YT, they would never had made a penny off their views.

If you want to talk about free speech, why not criticize Trump who once called for the FCC to fine a commentator on Fox News for criticizing him.

Incompetent @RichLowry lost it tonight on @FoxNews. He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!

You probably are aware that the FCC doesn't regulate content on cable news networks, but Trump not only appears unaware of that he goes even further and says his critics should not even be allowed on TV. And then we elected him President.

That is much more disturbing than Twitter banning Milo Yiannopoulos or Richard Spencer.

Re:I don't think most people understand what VEVO

[q_e_t]

www.vevo.com. Looks separate to me.