Three days after YouTube launched its new streaming service, Vevo has announced that it is shuttering its individual website and applications. Vevo, a venture co-owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and YouTube‘s parent company Alphabet Inc, was a video hosting service that was created primarily to help content owners monetize their videos. The official website boasts that their videos collectively reach 25 billion views per month, hosting over 330 thousand videos. The platform eventually extended to include an app and some original content from Vevo itself, like Vevo dscvr and LIFT, both of which the company pledged to focus on as they shutter their website. (They also tease “new formats”, but what those “new formats” are remains to be seen.)
Vevo decided to focus on their brand, or as they worded it, they will continue to handle “Vevo-specific advertising on all distribution platforms – including the sponsorship of video premieres.” As tech writer Peter Kafka noted on Twitter, shutting down the website and apps means that Vevo isn’t that far off from shutting down altogether. As they prepare to shut down their apps and website, and as YouTube Premium takes precedence, it remains to be seen what will happen next to Vevo, the owner of most of YouTube Music’s videos. YouTube was, from the beginning, the primary hosting service for Vevo’s videos anyway, and the refocusing on making content YouTube’s platform rather than their own may ultimately be what keeps the platform’s name alive.
YouTube had made a deal earlier this month to sell Vevo’s videos directly to advertisers, rather than Vevo’s team handling sales, announced by Google adding Vevo videos to its “Google Preferred” tier.
