If you check out the Bloomberg Report site, there’s an article on the new Universal channel on YouTube. It’s a nice idea in theory, but YouTube is still a bit of a cesspool.
Realistically, the major record companies should seriously think about working together to build a music portal site, like the television companies did when they created Hulu. Hulu is clean and tidy, well designed, and if I go there I know I’m going to get professionally produced, high quality content every time.
The major record labels still have enough power to build a very strong portal site–a musical Hulu. With the number of high profile artists still in the stables of the major studios, a collaboratively built portal site could easily dominate the music scene for the next several decades.
Think about it–if I knew of a site that I could go to and be guaranteed to get to see a high-quality version of Bon Jovi’s latest video on the day of its release, I’d never bother with YouTube for music videos again. Especially if, like Hulu, they made the videos available for embedding. No more worries about bootleg videos disappearing, and ready, sanctioned access to rare videos? YouTube wouldn’t be worth my time anymore.
If the site also offered the ability to purchase downloads of audio and the videos at reasonable prices, it might be the Holy Grail that the record labels are looking for–the iTunes Killer. As soon as their content portal is established as the new center of the music industry, they can kill their licensing deals with Apple and end that drain on their profit margin. Digital storage is cheap, and overhead on downloads is almost nonexistent. Move tons of content, sell advertising by the pile, DOMINATE.
The record labels can do it, if they want to.
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Tags: Video