Competition For YouTube?

VEVO, the music video portal backed by Sony Music and Universal, is scheduled to launch before the end of the year, according to an announcement by both companies recently. Over the last six months there's been quite a buzz about Vevo, which is intended to be a premium content site that’s been called by those in the know a ‘Hulu for music videos’.

While you might be thinking that the world doesn't need another video portal, what's interesting about VEVO is the fact that the majority of funding came from the Abu Dhabi Media Company, which makes industry insiders believe that the company will have deep enough pockets to go after YouTube.

So it appears that VEVO is meant to be a revenue generator, unlike YouTube (although it now generates revenue, just not enough revenue), and the fact that both Uni and Sony have a deep catalog of not-yet-seen videos means that they probably won't need the massive viewership of YouTube to be successful.

About the only thing we haven't seen yet is the final user interface, which as we all know, will be the key to its success. You can have the best content, but if people have a hard time finding it or a bad experience using it, you're doomed. We'll see about VEVO soon.