Facebook is reportedly in talks to move away from its partnership with Google’s YouTube video service to deliver music videos for artists and bands on the social network and move to VEVO, according to Cnet.
Cnet cites sources with knowledge of the talks, noting that the discussions were in a “very preliminary” stage as there is still a year left on VEVO’s contract with YouTube to deliver music videos, but meetings are said to have occurred between the two parties “at least twice”.
It is believed that Facebook would seek to negociate a deal similar to VEVO’s existing arrangement with Google, whereby the social network would stream the music videos and the two companies would sell ads against them, sharing the resulting profit.
If a deal was to be reached, Facebook would tempt more visitors to its website, possibly tying the service into its new Timeline platform to allow free playback of music videos and increase social interactions around them.
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Cnet explains just how many visitors it could drive to the social network:
When it comes to growth potential, consider that Vevo has only been in business two full years but the video service was second only to YouTube in the number of unique users (130 million to 43 million respectively), according to Nielsen.
VEVO, a joint venture among Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Abu Dhabi Media with EMI content, introduced its new VEVO Match feature in its new UK iPhone app, matching music videos to user libraries. The service launches at a time where iTunes Match is starting to gain in popularity, scanning customer music collections to make ‘matched’ tracks available from the Cloud.
The music video service finds itself in a decent position; it can stay with YouTube and reap the rewards from the world’s biggest video service or it can partner with Facebook and enjoy the advantages of streaming to over 700 million users.
It has a year to decide, we imagine that if the talks are true, Facebook will be working hard to capitalise on the demand for online music videos.
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