On Monday, Brightcove announced that Sony BMG Music Entertainment will be utilizing its broadband technology to further its Web music video arm.
Sony BMG has already launched an ad-supported music video site called musicbox video. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Brightcove will provide a digital video distribution platform for the site, delivering the videos and taking care of advertisement sales while taking a small cut.
The Flash-based musicbox video currently displays a video player near the top of the page, with tabs for the daily Top 20, Rock, Hip Hop – R&B, and Pop music videos from Sony BMG’s stable of artists to the right of the player. Visitors to the site can click on a video of their choice, watch a short advertisement, and proceed to watch the music video.
Users can currently share videos with friends by either e-mailing them the video link or copying and pasting the link to share through other means. Consumers can also obtain an RSS feed for the site. In the future users will be able to embed videos on their personal sites. Artist interviews and behind-the-scenes footage will also be made available soon. These will all be tools that Sony BMG will attempt to optimize for the viral aspect of its videos.
A list of other artists is located underneath the player and includes Ben Folds, Britney Spears, and Matisyahu, who will all have “video codes coming soon!” according to the site. Artists under other Sony BMG brands, such as Epic, Columbia, and RCA, will also be unveiled in the future.
Musicbox video gives Sony BMG a vessel through which they can disperse their music videos to affiliate news and radio sites. Plans are set to eventually create individual pages for each artist which will feature some of the artist’s music videos.
Sony BMG will attempt to make a profit from this service through advertising revenue. They will sell pre-roll spots, video overlays, and sponsorships, and will allow advertisers to mix these options. DreamWorks Animation SKG and Hewlett-Packard have already signed on as advertisers for the site.
A more official affiliate program will be established, allowing sites to sign up for slightly larger players on their sites.
A major part of this move is the fact that Sony BMG will be allowing selected videos to be shared on any Web page. With this decision, Sony BMG limits itself to only having the power to select which artists and videos will be made available. Where the videos are shared and embedded is, essentially, out of their hands.
“You’re likely to see constraints on the programming,” said Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, who went on to say that Sony BMG might, for example, only make “the most recent hits from the most recent artists” available to consumers through this delivery channel.
Piracy is obviously the concern here, but Allaire says that the tradeoff will be a free, high-quality, and “rich experience” that users can place in their sites instead of using illegitimate, pirated music videos from other online video sources that do not have the rights to these artists, their music, and their videos.
Sources:
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=17284&
hed=Sony+BMG+Expands%26nbsp%3bWeb+Videos
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3614241
http://sonybmg.com/musicbox/video/
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