VEVO

(via <a href="http://www.flickr.com/apollo_zac" target="_blank">Flickr</a>)

Google announced today a major round of app additions for its media streaming Chromecast HDMI stick including Plex, Vevo, Songza, and more.

Chromecast, which retails for $35 (currently $32.88 on Amazon Prime), can now play local files synced with your Plex media library from iOS, Android, or Chrome. Plex support is highly requested and offers a major advantage for content consumers looking to play content from a device to an HDTV.

Today’s update also brings support for the music video streaming service Vevo as well as the music discovery radio Songza.
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YouTube has announced a crowd-sourced music awards show streamed live from New York on 3rd November, with the winning acts chosen by YouTube viewers.

We get it. You love music. From propelling unknown artists to the top of the charts, to cheering on established artists as they reinvent the music video, to remixing and reimagining your own, music fans have turned YouTube into the world’s go-to music destination. Now, to celebrate music fans and the music you love, we’re announcing a new kind of awards show–one powered by you … 
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2wQV2LeCqY&feature=youtu.be

Two weeks ago, we heard Google planned to invest in Vevo. Today, those rumors heat up with some specifics…

Bloomberg has the story:

Google Inc.’s YouTube is negotiating a $50 million equity investment in music video service Vevo LLC, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Google would own less than 10 percent of the company, giving Vevo a valuation of at least $500 million, said the people, who asked for anonymity because negotiations are still early and an agreement may not be reached.
The investment would be part of a broader contract to keep Vevo’s music videos on YouTube, the people said. Vevo, formed in 2009 by Vivendi SA’s Universal Music and Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment, and Google last year extended their existing contract until April.

Some of the most valuable (and clicked) content on YouTube is from Vevo-associated Artists. Vevo previously threatened to leave YouTube, so the investment would be to secure long-term access to the content advertised on and monetized by affiliate links to buy music.

It is also important to Google’s ecosystem to have easy and cheap access to all of Vevo’s content.

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After years of major record labels keeping the revenue from their ad-supported content on YouTube and VEVO, HollywoodReporter reported today that the National Music Publishers’ Association announced a deal with Universal Music Group (one of the owners of VEVO), which will see the label pay indie music publishers for the content:

The NMPA termed the agreement, which covers North America, a groundbreaking model licensing deal because it will allow songwriters and music publishers to share in revenue from music videos. Up until now, while Youtube and VEVO were making money on their ad-supported services, indie music publishers had not shared in that revenue because the major labels long considered videos as promotional tools and never paid for licensing the songs used in the videos. But as it became a growing revenue stream, indie publishers began to grumble that the major labels paid the major publishing companies but none of the independent music publishers.

The specifics of the deal have not been made public, but the report claimed that sources said publishers would get 15 percent of advertising revenues related to their content. It also claimed the deal would be “retroactive back to 2008” with the amount for 2008 and 2009 set at 10 percent. The deal is said to cover not just music videos, but also “concert footage, backstage videos and artist interviews.”

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According to a report from The New York Post, Google’s CEO Larry Page is considering extending the company’s relationship with label-backed music-video service Vevo by possibly buying an equity stake in the venture. The report claimed that Facebook is also considering making an investment in Vevo, which is reportedly currently valued at $1 billion and run by major labels including Universal Music Group and Sony Music.

Both Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are exploring an investment in Vevo as part of a broader partnership with the music-video service, The Post has learned.

Vevo already has a deal with Google to host its content on YouTube, but the report noted that agreement lasts only through the remainder of 2012. Vevo is reportedly negotiating with YouTube to accept lower than the two-thirds of ad-revenue it currently receives from the Vevo content that it hosts. As The Post pointed out, recent stats from comScore listed Vevo as YouTube’s top partner channel in April with 48 million unique viewers during the month.

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A new comScore research study revealed that United States viewership in January 2012 suffered a slight decline from December 2012, also proving Google was right to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into getting premium partners for content on YouTube. Last month, 181 million online users in the U.S. consumed nearly 40 billion online videos, which is a drop from 43.5 billion clips watched by 182 million users in December 2011. On average, we watched 22.6 hours of online clips with a 6.1-minute duration for each clip.

The search and Internet giant continues to lead the online video market with 152 million unique viewers. Google-operated websites cumulatively account for a whopping 18.6 billion views. Rival Hulu and VEVO delivered 877 and 717 million views, respectively.. In addition to Google websites, VEVO (51.5 million), Yahoo websites (49.2 million), Viacom Digital (48.1 million) and Facebook (45.1 million) round-up the top five online video destinations in the country.

Be advised that comScore defines a video as any streamed segment of audiovisual content for both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, such as television episodes with ad pods in the middle, each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmnkYyHQqNs]

Google today said its YouTube site hit a trillion playbacks in 2011 – that’s a 1,000,000,000,000 view counts for you, or about 140 views for every person on the earth. In a post over at the official YouTube blog, the company invited folks to “see what the world watched on YouTube in 2011 with YouTube Rewind”, available at www.youtube.com/rewind.

It’s an interactive timeline of this year’s most popular videos and events. As you can imagine, kitten videos, dog clips and videos of cute babies (iPad toddlers, anyone?) are again amongst the most-viewed clips not put out by big music companies. And what’s the biggest YouTube video of the year?

Rebecca Black, of course, an American pop singer who also dominated Google’s annual list of the fastest-growing search queries. Her music video is followed by this cute dog clip, then the Jack Sparrow music video (featuring Michael Bolton).

In the “most watched videos from major music labels globally” category, Pitbull’s On The Floor was by the most popular music video, although their Give Me Everything (featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer) and Rain Over Me (featuring Marc Anthony) were pretty popular as well. In fact, those three music videos accrued over four hundred million views.

The majority of YouTube clips that have managed to clock insane view counts throughout the year come from YouTube’s VEVO channel, dedicated to music videos (VEVO is a joint venture among Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Abu Dhabi Media.

Go past the break for a handy list of the most popular YouTube videos of 2011 across several categories.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0]

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