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Business News Digital
Vevo boss says adding a premium offer is on his agenda
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 18 February 2016
There has been speculation for a while that newish Vevo boss Erik Huggers might look into taking the music video platform into paid-for subscription territory, rather than just existing as an ad-funded video service available through YouTube channels and other proprietary apps. The acquisition last December of Showyou, a video curation platform that had dabbled with a subscription offer, only added to that speculating.
Well, now Huggers has told the Code/Media conference in California that he has been mulling adding some sort of premium offer to the Vevo mix since joining the company last April, and that he has reached the conclusion “just having an ad-supported model is not sustainable in the long run”.
Though, according to Billboard, he wouldn’t be drawn on a model or timeline for a Vevo premium service, and was keen to add that there would always be a free-to-access option alongside any paid-for set-up.
Huggers also discussed his other plans for the business, including ramping up and enhancing original content, boosting the profile of Vevo’s channels beyond YouTube, and distinguishing his service from other video sites by stressing its focus on music.
Vevo is “a specialty store that only focuses on music” he said, and which “does justice to music, caters to the audience, offers curation and offers a better experience than what I would call the lowest common denominator of content. Is it right that amazing content from our artists sits right next to a cat video?”
Depends on the artist I reckon. And the cat.
