Vevo Planning Ad-Free Subscription Streaming Video Service

The latest streaming video brand to jump on the subscription bandwagon is Vevo, which announced that it’s working on a paid, ad-free music video service that it could debut as early as next year.

Vevo Chief Executive Erik Huggers revealed the plan for the paid version of the Internet video service during the Code/Media conference on Wednesday. Why? Because not everyone likes watching ads, but money makes the world go ’round. If you take away ads, the company has to make money somehow. That’s where paid subscriptions come in.

“Today our business is all about ad-supported,” said Huggers at the conference, via Re/code. “So we think that one of the important things — we hear this throughout the industry — is the move toward subscription. That’s something we’re interested in.”

The paid model is one way the bigwigs at Vevo are looking to refresh Vevo, a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music that launched in 2009 to capture the music video audience on YouTube.

Vevo says its videos get around 17 billion views a month, half of those on mobile devices, but advertising hasn’t raked in as much cash as the company hoped. The new Vevo would be akin to a specialty store that caters to its audience, Huggers says, perhaps with more original content.

“We think there is a big opening and a wide space to make something better,” Huggers said. “That requires quite a bit of new muscle tissue that the organization doesn’t have yet.”

Vevo Is Working on a Paid Music Video Subscription Service [Re/code]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist