Further evidence of the company’s success: The impressive financials announced by Vevo president and CEO Rio Caraeff during an onstage interview at our D: Dive Into Media conference.

“In the last year alone we’ve generated over $150 million,” said Caraeff. “We paid the labels about $100 million (over the last 2 years). So we’re making money.”

An impressive feat for such a young company. How did Vevo pull it off? By not holding back its content.

“Our strategy was never to create value through scarcity,” Caraeff said. “We feel the Web is about choice and empowering people to go where they want. With Vevo we wanted to facilitate access. So you go to YouTube and you can find Vevo. Go to facebook, you find Vevo. It’s about ubiquity on the Web.”

Mobile is another point of access. Xbox is yet another.

“Our business is only as interesting as it is large,” said Caraeff. “If we want to reach a lot people, we need to be in a lot of places.”

So just how big is Vevo’s business? Pretty big.

“From a volume perspective our growth has been tremendous,” said Caraeff. “We had 300 million global views per month when we launched. Today we’re seeing 3.5 billion views per month. That’s about 42 billion views per year.”

So what’s Vevo’s next move? Will it pursue a linear strategy, head to cable?

“It’s unlikely that we’ll start a cable channel from scratch or buy a cable company in distress,” said Caraeff. “But I think we’ll have linear experiences on the TV all powered by Vevo.”

If you’re reading this site, you know who all of these folks are. But just for formality’s sake:

Jason Kilar is CEO of Hulu, the video joint venture co-owned by Comcast, Disney and News Corp.’s broadcast TV units. The site has been a huge hit with viewers and subscribers, who have put it on pace to generate $500 million in revenue this year. But its owners aren’t quite sure what to do with it: They put it up for sale this summer, then decided to hang on to it after all. This will be Kilar’s first major public appearance since that tumult, so we’ll have plenty of questions.

Dick Costolo is CEO of Twitter, which has moved from Web oddity to a service used by more than 100 million people a month. Twitter’s founders didn’t like the notion of turning their baby into a media company, but that’s exactly what Costolo is trying to do now; he is ramping up efforts to attract more eyeballs and sell more ads. And he’s leaning heavily on big media companies — especially TV networks and movie distributors — to make that happen.

Martha Stewart is the founder of Martha Stewart Living, the multimedia empire she built from scratch, which now includes magazines, TV shows, a Web site and multiple lines of branded goods; her newest coup is a big-dollar deal with J.C. Penney. She’ll be joined onstage by Lisa Gersh, the president and chief operating officer Stewart brought in from NBC Universal nearly a year ago. At NBC U, Gersh had overseen the acquisition of the Weather Channel, among other duties; she had previously been chief operating officer at Oxygen Media.

They’ll join a lineup that includes ESPN President John Skipper, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New Yorker editor David Remnick, Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull and Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff. And we may still have a surprise or two between now and the end of January.

All Things Digital’s first-ever media conference runs Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, an hour south of Los Angeles. See you there.

Meanwhile, YouTube users seem very happy to do what they have always done on YouTube: Watch weird clips of people and animals behaving oddly.

The site has published its list of 2011’s most popular videos, and they’re basically what you’d expect: Clips of cute dogs, and cute babies, and an annoying 8-bit cat, and a really cute cat. And, of course, Rebecca Black, the poor/maybe rich girl who may or may not be in on the joke. Probably not.

The surprise, if you don’t pay attention to this stuff, is that YouTube’s Top 10 most-popular list of 2011 isn’t really the site’s Top 10 most-popular list. It’s the list of the top 10 videos not put out by big music companies.

Because those clips, which are distributed by Vevo, the Hulu-for-music videos, are way, way, way more popular than anything else on the site.

The most popular music video of the year, for instance, is this Jennifer Lopez clip, featuring Pitbull. It’s at nearly half a billion views, which means it is likely more than 2x Rebecca Black’s clip, the top non-big-music-label clip.

In fact, it turns out that any clip featuring Pitbull does exceptionally well. Here are two more, which collectively have generated close to 400 million views. I’ll let much smarter people, like Maura Johnston, explain why Pitbull is so popular. For our purposes, the key takeaway here is that people really, really, really like watching music videos on YouTube. Even more than they like funny girls and cute cats.

That seems like an obvious correlation. But, until recently, that wasn’t the case, for a couple reasons. Some Web video sites had held back a bit from shoving ads in front of users’ faces, for fear of scaring them off. And lots of folks who wanted to buy video ads couldn’t find places they wanted to place them.

This is changing now, and that means the Web video business might finally be catching up to the long-running Web video boom.

Here, for instance, is promising news for ad buyers and sellers, via FreeWheel, a start-up that helps serve and manage video ads for the likes of Turner, Vevo and Fox. FreeWheel says that last quarter, for the first time, the rate of video ad views grew faster than overall video views — 128 percent versus 97 percent:

Just as important is that viewers seem okay with the bump in ads, too. The completion rate for the ads seems to have held steady, even as the number of ads has increased.

That’s particularly true for “long-form” stuff — often TV episodes on Hulu and other sites — which have recently seen ad loads double. The longer you watch a video clip, it seems, the more likely you are to watch the accompanying ads all the way through.

Easy enough to cover this stuff with caveats, the most obvious being that FreeWheel is anything but an unbiased observer here. It’s also important to note that this data goes through the first part of this fall. And, as lots of glum Web publishers will tell you now, the Web ad business has gotten a lot less robust in the last couple months.

Big picture, the Web video business is still very much a work in progress, which you can see at a glance by noting the turmoil at Hulu, or YouTube’s overhaul. And there’s still a long way to go: Video ads grew 42 percent in the first half of the year, but still only make up 6 percent of the overall Web ad business. But if it keeps headed in this direction it’s going to quickly make up ground.

Speaking of YouTube, here’s a clip Google’s site tells me is a new favorite. Involves some standard-issue hip-hop swearing:

Disney CEO Bob Iger tapped Skipper to take over his company’s most important asset just a week ago. But Skipper, who had been ESPN’s content boss, has been a rising star there for years, hopping from print (!) to the Web to TV programming. We’ll have his first onstage interview in his new role.

At a time when the value of Big Media’s content is in flux, ESPN’s lock on sports — DVR-proof, pirate-resistant programming that draws mass eyeballs in a niche age — is more valuable than ever. Can Skipper keep it that way?

We’ll ask him in January, as he joins a lineup that includes: YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New Yorker editor David Remnick, Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull and Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff.

All Things Digital’s first-ever media conference runs Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, an hour south of Los Angeles. See you there.

For our first-ever media conference, we’re trying to cast a wide net, so you’ll hear from movers and shakers from a range of companies. The common theme: All of them are making and distributing content during a time of unprecedented technological change. How do they adapt?

So far, we’ve announced that Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New York editor David Remnick, Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. and News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey will be joining us on Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Nigel, just south of Los Angeles.

Let’s add three more to that list:

Bob Pittman helped build MTV, then AOL. And after spending several years as a full-time investor in everything from Zynga to a high-end tequila, he’s running a media company once again — this time overseeing radio and billboard giant Clear Channel. Why would you want to run a radio company when everyone’s consumed with the likes of iTunes, Pandora and Spotify? Because it’s still a growth industry, Pittman argues. And the fact that it’s the industry that gave him his start, at age 15, makes the story even more interesting.

Thomas Tull is a relative newcomer to Hollywood, but he’s moving fast. After founding Legendary Pictures in 2004, he’s produced a string of hits, including “The Hangover,” “The Dark Knight” and “300.” And if you accuse him of making dude-centric movies that appeal to “fanboys,” he won’t flinch — they’re the ones who still come out to the theaters, if you know how to get them there. Last spring, his track record helped him secure an investment from Silicon Valley heavyweight Accel Partners, which gives you a hint about where Tull thinks all of this is going.

Joint ventures formed by big media companies are a tricky proposition, but Rio Caraeff seems to be making his work. Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos,” is co-owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music, and helped in large part by Google’s YouTube. And as of last month it was the second-biggest video site on the Web — a title that used to be held by Hulu.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now: You can find registration information here.

Google’s video service accounts for 22 percent of all mobile bandwidth, reports Allot Communications, a telco outfit that tracks this stuff twice a year (via GigaOm).  YouTube’s global share is up from 17 percent a year ago; not surprisingly, YouTube is the dominant mobile video streaming service, with 52 percent of the market.

That jibes directionally with music video site Vevo’s reports of a boom in its mobile traffic, as well as continued growth from Facebook and Twitter, which happen to be excellent sources of YouTube links. Allot reports that Facebook has seen a 166 percent increase in mobile bandwidth so far this year, while Twitter is up 297 percent.

And if you’re watching a video on Vevo, there’s an increasingly good chance you’re watching it on an Android phone, an iPad or some other mobile device. The company says that 85 million of its three billion video streams came from mobile platforms in May; that mobile number was up 64 percent from the previous month, and up 365 percent from January.

Not a big surprise. A bit surprising: Where those mobile views are taking place.

Vevo says its research shows that mobile viewing isn’t really “mobile” at all — it happens most frequently in the bedroom, and second-most frequently in the living room.

A few more statistics help clear the picture up. Vevo also says that half of its users are 13 to 24 years old, and that most of its mobile views come in the evening and the afternoon. So here’s my interpretation of the data: Instead of coming home after school and watching MTV on the couch like the youngsters of long ago, today’s kids are coming home and watching videos on their own personal screens.

Some Web video purveyors — notably Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — have played down the impact of phones and tablets on their business. They’re most interested in what happens when people watch their stuff on TV screens, in their living rooms. But Vevo’s videos are practically designed for small-screen consumption — so much so that people seem happy to watch them even when much bigger screens are a couple feet away.

According to sources close to the situation, News Corp. is down to one possible investing group in its quest to make lemonade out of the lemon that its Myspace social entertainment hub has become.

In the lastest of many scenarios considered, several sources said its owner, News Corp., will continue to own about 20 percent of Myspace. The main bidder is a dark horse bidding group, which includes Activision Chairman and CEO Bobby Kotick as one of the potential investors.

The deal, cautioned sources, is not final and could easily fall apart.

Interestingly, if such a deal is struck, he would apparently be involved as an individual and not for the giant gaming company, and would play no management role in the company.

Kotick would presumably need permission from Activision for such a high-profile investment, even if he played a smaller role.

Kotick’s possible involvement has not been mentioned in previous reports.

Sources said the other possible bidders — including music video service Vevo, a group including Myspace founder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe, an internal effort by current CEO Mike Jones, several private equity firms and even myYearbook — mentioned in past reports have not worked out for various reasons.

Vevo had seemed the likeliest winner, but its bid appears to have foundered for now, due to the complex nature of its music label ownership.

It is not clear what the price will be for Myspace, which was once the leading social networking site before the world dis-Liked it for Facebook.

One thing is certain: It is nowhere near the $100 million that News Corp. reportedly sought.

The site — even after an overhaul to focus on entertainment — has recently been losing money and traffic, although it is still a large destination on the Web.

News Corp. declined comment, as did Kotick.

Yes, Myspace is still for sale.

But, no, no one has yet made a good enough bid–in other words, at the more than $100 million level its owner, News Corp., has sought–to knock out anyone else.

And who knows who will, as those working on the deal gave a deadline today for any revised bids for the social entertainment hub.

Among those remaining in the running: two strategic bidders, although the CEO of the Vevo music service has denied interest; several private equity players, including Criterion Capital Partners, which bought Bebo from AOL for a song; and an aggressive inside effort by CEO Michael Jones, which would include venture investors and a possible continued smaller ownership by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

News Corp. is holding out for a few more bids today from those who had expressed initial interest, said sources close to the situation, after the company provided additional information about long troubled service.

That included data showing some increased user engagement from a recent Facebook artists profile app launch and a new music playback system, among other efforts to revive Myspace.

But, added sources, this is likely to be the final call for bids, since News Corp. reportedly would like to complete the deal and get Myspace off its books before end of its fiscal quarter this month.

“I think somebody with some brains and guts could do pretty well with the property,” said one News Corp. insider, noting that the Chinese social site Renren is smaller than Myspace in both size and revenue, even though it now has a $5 billion valuation after its recent IPO.

Perhaps, but such a windfall seems about as unlikely as Myspace winning back its once-might social networking crown.

Thus, finally settling on a decent bidder is Myspace’s best–and perhaps only–hope going forward.

The companies considering a deal for the social media and entertainment site include private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital Partners LLC, owner of social networking site Bebo, according to people familiar with the matter. Some firms are expected to team up on bids, a person familiar with the matter said.

News Corp. also has had talks with a Chinese Internet company about a potential deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. Online music video site Vevo also looked at a potential deal with Myspace, but the company’s interest in the site has waned, according to one person familiar with the matter.

News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal and All Things Digital.

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While no one inside or outside Myspace owner News Corp. expects fireworks and giant piles of money, the tire-kicking for the long-troubled social-networking-turned-entertainment site actually starts Wednesday.

That’s when about a dozen interested parties will finally get a walk-through of the books and more by management and the serious talks begin.

But, said several sources, despite a variety of reports of various interested buyers, no deal for the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Myspace is imminent with any one of them.

Instead, most expect some kind of outcome within two weeks at the earliest.

Among the possibilities is anything from an outright sale to partnership that continues to involve News Corp., which has engaged Allen & Co. to conduct the sad proceedings.

Among those in the fray are, as has been reported, music video network Vevo, owned by several media giants. It is the most prominent strategic suitor for Myspace.

But talks with Vevo are preliminary, as are all others.

In fact, most of the others interested are as expected: moneybag private equity players, such as Providence Equity Partners and Silver Lake Partners. Both have been in discussions with News Corp. in earlier efforts to offload Myspace.

Interestingly, Criterion Capital Partners, which bought AOL’s Bebo social networking site for less than $10 million last June, is not in the bidding as yet.

Neither is Zynga, the San Francisco casual gaming start-up. Various stories had rumored of its interest in Myspace, but they are inaccurate. In addition, neither AOL nor Yahoo seem likely bidders either.

And it goes without saying that the Silicon Valley social networking site that did Myspace in–Facebook–is also not a buyer. So too Google, which–back in the headier days–handed Myspace a fortune as part of an ill-advised advertising deal.

In any case, whoever buys Myspace needs a lot of patience, which seems to have run out at News Corp., where top execs take turns bashing it to shareholders.

That’s no surprise. After a laudable though glacial redesign as a music and entertainment hub last fall, traffic has declined 44 percent in a recent month from a year ago, to 37.7 million unique visitors in the U.S.

Worse still, the News Corp. unit that houses Myspace showed an operating loss of $156 million in the recent quarter, mostly related to a severe drop-off of advertising revenue at the site.

That plunge in fortunes will surely have an impact on the price buyers are willing to pay for the once iconic brand.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

An industry executive cautioned that a Myspace-Vevo deal would be hampered by their complex ownership structures, which involve multiple parties. Vevo is jointly owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Co. Myspace operates Myspace Music, a joint venture with some record labels that are also part-owners of Vevo.

A spokeswoman for Vevo declined to comment.

News Corp. has courted several suitors in attempts to offload the social media and entertainment site, according to people familiar with the matter.

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That’s changing starting today, as the company begins to stick “pre-roll” ads in front of several thousand of its clips, including a new set of music videos that hasn’t been available for YouTube mobile until now.

YouTube will start running videos from Vevo, the “Hulu for Music” joint venture that it works with. And it will run ads with those clips, as well as a few thousand other clips, primarily from its network of semi-pro “partners.”

The caveats: The music clips will run only on Google’s Android handsets, and not on Apple’s iPhone or any other competitors’ phones. And the clips will be limited to whatever Vevo has available in its catalog. Which means, most notably, that Google won’t be able to show clips from Warner Music Group, since the company still hasn’t come to terms with Vevo.

That doesn’t mean iPhone users have to go without music videos, of course: There’s a Vevo iPhone app, if you’re so inclined, and there’s plenty of other ways to get music videos on your phone if you want or need to. It’s just that Google won’t make any money when you watch them.

The big picture is that YouTube says it is now generating 200 million video views a day from mobile devices (that number includes both phones and tablets like the iPad), up 3x from last year. And now it wants start turning those views into dollars, or at least pennies.

Worth noting that while YouTube has been most aggressive about putting “overlay” ads on the clips it runs on the Web, it’s not doing so here.

That makes sense, because the format would be particularly annoying on a small screen, where the real estate it eats up would be even more noticeable. And because the point of overlay ads is to get a user to click on them, which opens up a new site. That works fine on the Web, but, again, it seems like a very tough sell on a handset.

On the other hand, you can see why YouTube would want a page like this: It makes a nice, cleaning landing page to send traffic to and from, just like the “shows” and “movies” pages it has previously set up. You could probably get a nice premium for ads, too, though so far the page is banner-free.

Note that this is separate from Vevo, the “Hulu for Music” joint venture set up by Universal Music Group and Sony (SNE) that YouTube is supporting but not investing in. The YouTube music page ends up linking to a lot of Vevo stuff, but it’s not doing that exclusively. You might get a link to Sony/Vevo’s AC/DC, or you might get one to an oddity like “Jersey Shore” semi-celebrity Pauly D, promoting his new single. (Pauly D has a new single!)

The page is self-explanatory, but in case you’re itching to start hearing something immediately, here’s a sample of what YouTube is currently promoting there–a little “Jersey Shore.”

Got that?

I didn’t either, the first few times I read a press release from Warner announcing a new “industry-leading partnership” between the music label and MTV Networks. But in short, Warner is bringing in MTV to sell its digital inventory, replacing an earlier relationship with Outrigger, a boutique sales shop. And while the release has zero mention of Google (GOOG) or YouTube, MTV’s chief job will be to sell ads against Warner’s clips on the giant video site, which accounts for the vast majority of Warner’s video views.

It’s not uncommon for MTV to sell its own stuff on other people’s sites–it has a “Tribes” ad network that does that on properties around the Web. But as far as I can tell, this is the first time that it has sold other people’s inventory, and the first time it has sold ads on YouTube.

Which makes sense, given Google and Viacom’s (VIA) three-year court battle. That fight is going to keep going, by the way, if Viacom makes good on its promise to appeal Google’s summary judgment victory last week.

So how’s that sales relationship going to work? I’ve asked Google and Viacom for comment.

Meanwhile, in the “digital music makes strange bedfellows” category, I’m told that MTV isn’t the only company that Warner approached about repping its stuff on YouTube. Other potential candidates included Hulu, AOL and Vevo.

That last one may raise some eyebrows, given that Warner is the only big music label that isn’t working with Vevo–which is supposed to be the “Hulu for music videos.”

But if MTV can sell ads on YouTube while fighting it in court, I guess anything can happen.

Maybe, according to comScore: The Internet traffic counter says Americans’ appetite for Web clips actually shrank in January.

ComScore says 173.4 million people watched 32.4 billion streams that month. That’s down from 177.6 million and 33.2 billion respectively, in December.

A minor dip, to be sure. Bear in mind that the number of videos streamed is more than double the total we saw a year ago.

And maybe you can chalk the month-to-month drop on the Christmas holidays, which give people lots of downtime that they tend to spend on the Web.

Still, given that we’ve been consuming ever-increasing amounts of video for quite some time, it’s worth noting.

It’s also worth noting that comScore’s (SCOR) numbers don’t mean exactly what you think they do.

When comScore says that Hulu streamed 903,078 videos in January (down 10 percent from December), it doesn’t mean that Americans watched 903,078 shows. It means they watched some combination of 903,078 clips and advertisements, because comScore counts them both as streams.

In other words, a single episode of say, “The Daily Show,” could count as multiple streams, depending on the number of ads Hulu showed.

There’s nothing wrong with counting this way as long as we all know what the numbers mean. But comScore itself acknowledges that it’s confusing. And the company says it plans to break out ads and content at some point in the nearish future.

ComScore’s competitor, Nielsen, meanwhile, already distinguishes between the two. (If you want more on this, check out Hulucination, an awesomely obsessive blog by Big Money writer Chadwick Matlin).

Back to the numbers. Beyond the dip, pretty much the same thing we see every month: Hulu–owned by News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, GE’s (GE) NBC and Disney’s (DIS) ABC–streams more video than anyone. Except for Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, which dwarfs everyone.

Meanwhile Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos” owned by two of the big music labels, shows up on the Top 10 list in its first full month of operation.

In other news: Did you know you can choreograph a figure-skating routine to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”?

Sony (SNE) joined forces with the label by streaming his runway show on video site Vevo, projecting it on enormous Bravia screens and providing Vaio notebooks and “Bloggie” video cameras to reporters.

The commingling was perhaps better in theory than in practice. Plenty of flashbulbs popped, and others took photos with their iPhones and BlackBerrys, but few journalists and bloggers used the Sony-furnished devices. The event’s Twitter hashtag, “#WRastSony,” produced only a handful of tweets, with about half coming from the Sony Electronics account.

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Vivendi says it will install Lucian Grainge as head of its Universal Music Group unit in 2011, replacing longtime head Doug Morris. The Grainge era will really start this summer, since Universal’s international boss will be moving to New York in July, and he and Morris will be “co-CEOs” for a six-month stint.

This one will surprise absolutely no one as it has been in the works for a very long time, and people both in and outside of Universal have been trying to figure out how they’ll fit in after Grainge’s ascension. In the meantime, a more pressing issue for Universal is chatter that the company is looking at yet another round of layoffs this spring.

Release:

Vivendi announced today the appointment of Lucian Grainge as Chief Executive Officer of Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company. Mr. Grainge is promoted from his current role as Chairman and CEO of London-based Universal Music Group International (UMGI). He will take up the position on Jan. 1st 2011, succeeding Doug Morris, who will remain as Chairman. He will relocate to New York from July 1st 2010. During these six months, Doug Morris and Lucian Grainge will act as co-CEOs of UMG. Lucian Grainge will report to Jean-Bernard Levy and become a member of the Vivendi Management Board.

Under Lucian Grainge’s leadership since 2005, UMGI has grown its market share worldwide, broken global acts and led the music industry in developing a range of new digital services. He started his career with CBS/April Music in 1979, advancing to positions in Artists & Repertoire (A&R) and talent development, and rising to senior management positions at PolyGram UK and Universal Music internationally.

Doug Morris commented: “The time has come for Lucian to step up to the CEO role. I am very happy with the new organization as I have been grooming him to succeed me for quite a while now. I know he is ready, willing and able to attack the challenges of the new decade.”

Commenting on the appointment, Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman of the Vivendi Management Board, stated: “I am delighted that Lucian Grainge has agreed to move to New York to take on the Chief Executive role. His track record speaks for itself, finding stars, growing revenues and building new business models. He has the right combination of experience and innovation to take UMG forward as the migration into the digital era accelerates.”

Jean-Bernard Levy went on: “I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Doug Morris for the extraordinary results he has achieved over the years in a very tough environment. After starting out as a songwriter in 1965, Doug has overseen 35 years in the business and taken it from Vinyl to Vevo. Lucian will be able to benefit from their period in tandem. I know Doug, as the chairman of UMG, will continue to provide a major contribution to the business and the music industry as a whole.”

Lucian Grainge added: “Stepping into Doug’s shoes is an honour and a privilege. This is a great industry which I believe has as much to look forward to as to be proud of. If we keep getting the basics right of exceptional music and artistry, backed by a great team and sound business sense, then we’ll continue to achieve success.”

What gives? It’s sort of simple: The band would prefer that you watch the video via Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, but EMI won’t let Web users like me embed the YouTube version of the clip.

The band explains why this is so here, but it’s a story we’ve heard before–in a nutshell, it’s harder to sell ads against embedded videos.

That’s supposedly going to get better with Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos” joint venture that EMI is licensing its stuff to, so perhaps this kind of thing won’t be necessary in the future.

(That said, the band’s account is well worth reading, as it is a clear and even-handed assessment of the music industry’s attempt to wrestle with Web-era economics. Excerpt: “We’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.”)

Meanwhile, the Vimeo situation is a bit confusing: EMI is suing the site because it encourages users to upload “lip dubs”–what you and I would call “music videos”–that use copyrighted songs without authorization. In this case, OK Go is the entity uploading the songs/videos, so I suppose that makes the legal situation more palatable (note the big copyright notice at the end). But I’m still not sure how or why the licensing/advertising issues that put the kibosh on the YouTube video don’t come into play here.

In any event, here’s the song, followed by a YouTube version of the one that made the band sorta famous:

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

It has fixed its tech problems and is doing just fine, thank you very much. Vevo says it is generating around 20 million video views a day, which puts it on track to generate some 600 million views a month.

Some context: ComScore (SCOR) says that Hulu itself generates some 900,000 video views in the U.S, making it the second biggest video site after YouTube. And Viacom (VIA), the current No. 3, generates 500,000 views.

If you want to compare apples to apples, though, you have to cut Vevo’s 600 million down to 300 million since about half its views come from outside the U.S. Still, that’s enough to qualify Vevo for eighth place in comScore’s rankings, placing it above AOL (AOL) and CBS (CBS).

And when comScore’s December video numbers are released at the end of this month, Vevo’s numbers will come in below 300 million since it didn’t launch until Dec. 9 and because comScore’s numbers are usually lower than any site’s internal numbers.

Still, that’s a lot of eyeballs, and it’s more than the joint venture between Sony (SNE), Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media Company expected. But the fact that Vevo began with a huge audience, rocky start and all, shouldn’t be a surprise.

In fact, I said so last month. No need to type it twice:

While everyone has rightly been flocking to Vevo.com itself for a look-see, it’s not the most important Web site for the joint venture. That would be YouTube, where most Vevo users are actually going to encounter–and watch–Vevo videos, without even knowing that they’re watching a Vevo video.

To be clear: When Google’s (GOOG) video site agreed to help Universal Music Group (and later Sony) launch a new hub for music videos, it didn’t mean it would be sending its users away from YouTube.

When you read about Vevo launching with 400 million video views in the first month, understand that the majority of those aren’t coming from the new site but from YouTubers who are watching music clips the same way they always do, on YouTube. But Vevo will get credit for those eyeballs and any ad dollars they generate.

That is: If you’re watching a Ke$ha video on YouTube, there’s a good chance you’re watching a Vevo video.

So. Next question. Can Vevo turn all those views into dollars?

We’ll see. CEO Rio Caraeff tells me his sales group continues to bring in high-profile advertisers–the latest, last week, was Procter & Gamble (PG)–and has been able to get between $25 and $30 for every 1,000 impressions. That’s a whole lot better than videos traditionally earned on YouTube, and as good as some TV shows.

But it’s relatively easy to announce that you’re selling your initial batch of inventory at a high rate. It’s much harder to sustain that over time. So it’s hard to read too much into those numbers just yet.

In the meantime, the site is going to get much bigger in the near future.

For one thing, it should start showing videos from EMI Music Group within a few weeks, which means that it will have clips from three of the four big music labels. Warner Music Group (WMG), the lone holdout, has its own deal with YouTube.

And in March, Vevo should start syndicating its clips to other big properties, starting with CBS and AOL, meaning it will have plenty more eyeballs to sell. The challenge will be proving that the JV’s thesis–music videos alone are attractive to advertisers–is worth the effort.

Meanwhile, here’s a primer on Ke$ha, whom I didn’t know about until the other day. She is apparently big with the kids these days.

Gawker’s Doree Shafrir explains this to the rest of us. And if you don’t like words, here’s the clip:

But Hulu is still playing around with music videos, at least at the margins. Last month, it began hosting some clips from EMI, which was promoting a new Norah Jones album. Now the site, owned by GE’s (GE) NBC, Disney’s (DIS) ABC, and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox is adding a few more, via Warner Music Group (WMG).

Emphasis on “few”: For now, the only Warner artist you can find on the site is Muse, which is a band, I learned this weekend. The label’s release says you’ll be able to see clips from Jason Mraz and Paramore in the next few weeks, with more coming next year. (Props to CNET’s Greg Sandoval for sniffing this out earlier today).

Meanwhile, if you want to see clips from every other Warner artist, from Green Day to Madonna, you should look to Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, where Warner has carved out a deal to launch a mini-Vevo of its own.

Warner isn’t discussing terms, but given the limited number of artists the company is trying out here, it’s easy enough to get the impression that the label views this primarily as a promotional deal, not one with a big financial upside. Another indicator: My understanding is that under the terms of the agreement, Hulu will take the lead on selling ads against the clips, as opposed to the YouTube deal, where Warner is handling sales itself.

Here’s one of Hulu’s new Muse clips. Not my thing, at least based on what I saw of the band’s performance on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend. But whatever floats your boat. Press release below:

WARNER MUSIC GROUP ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT WITH HULU TO OFFER MUSIC VIDEOS AND CONCERT FOOTAGE

New Partnership Debuts with Rich Content Offering
From British Rock Sensation Muse

New Artist Pages Featuring Jason Mraz and Paramore to Launch in Early 2010

New York, December 22, 2009 — Warner Music Group (WMG), one of the world’s leading music companies, today announced an agreement with Hulu, an online video service that offers hit TV shows, movies and clips at Hulu.com and other online destination sites–anytime in the U.S. The agreement brings an artist-focused online video experience that features music videos, artist interviews, live concerts and rare behind the scenes footage from WMG’s world-renowned artists and labels including Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records.

Warner Bros. recording artists Muse are the first artists featured under the agreement.  Recently, Hulu launched an all Muse artist page (www.hulu.com/muse) that features the band’s appearance on Saturday Night Live’s December 19th holiday episode as well as content from Muse’s sold out tour dates at Wembley Stadium, exclusive interviews and rare deep-catalog videos.

Hulu will also launch artist pages for Atlantic’s multiple Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Jason Mraz and for Fueled By Ramen/Atlantic’s multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated rock band Paramore in the coming weeks.  More artist channels will be announced in early 2010.

In making the announcement, Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy and Business Development, WMG, said, “We’re pleased to be working with Hulu as we expand our premium ad-supported video strategy to provide our artists with a customized and flexible approach to marketing and monetizing their music, by leveraging the most powerful partnerships and platforms in the industry. Hulu has been a leader and innovator in this space, and we look forward to working with them on creating compelling, content-rich artist channels that will provide a dynamic experience to their fans, while introducing our artists to new audiences online.”

Muse will launch their US tour in February 2010 in support of their fifth studio album, The Resistance, which earned them their highest-ever debut on the Billboard album chart when it debuted at No. 3. The Resistance debuted at No. 1 in 20 countries around the world. Their current single, “Uprising,” has topped Mediabase’s Alternative Radio chart for the past 16 weeks, breaking the record for the longest No. 1 track at Modern Rock for 2009.

Jason Mraz most recently released an all new live CD/DVD titled Jason Mraz’s Beautiful Mess–Live On Earth recorded at the Chicago stop on his Gratitude Café Tour. This comes on the heels of his third studio album, the platinum-certified We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things., which has received multiple Grammy nominations, including most recently Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for “Make it Mine” and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for “Lucky.” Additionally Jason’s song, “I’m Yours,” set the record this year as the longest-running song on Billboard’s “Hot 100” in the 51-year history of the chart.

Paramore’s new album Brand New Eyes, is the follow up to their 1.8 million selling RIOT!. The album, which was produced by Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Kid Rock) and co-produced by Paramore, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and features the hit single “Ignorance.”  Paramore also contributed two songs to the soundtrack for the box office smash “Twilight,” including the Grammy-nominated focus track “Decode.” The band’s THE FINAL RIOT! DVD has been certified gold by the RIAA, making it the first Atlantic Records video/DVD release to be certified gold in more than 10 years. The band just wrapped up a sold out UK tour including a stop at London’s Wembley Arena.

Eun, who runs partnerships for Google’s site, confirmed earlier reports that YouTube is looking to stream movies and/or TV shows that aren’t available on the site now and won’t be supported by advertising. So someone, either consumers themselves or a sponsor who picks up the tab, would need to pay for them directly.

When? “In the not too distant future,” Eun says–while leaving enough wiggle room for Google (GOOG) to avoid actually saying that it is committed to any particular plan.

Here’s an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Eun a few days ago (you can see all of it in the video below):

David Eun: We’ve been thinking about how to provide access to more and more content, and a lot of that content isn’t available through an ad model. So we’ve been thinking about different ways to access content and have producers of content come to YouTube and pick different monetization models.

Peter Kafka: Just to be clear, when you say that when it’s not accessible through ad models, you’re saying a consumer would pay for it in some way directly? A one-off or a subscription model?

DE: Potentially. A consumer. Or a sponsor. But there’d be a different business model behind that….

PK: And when might we see some of these alternate [paid] versions of YouTube products coming out?

DE: We’re still testing things, and we want to make sure that we’re working with partners and making sure that we’re meeting their expectations. But timing? In the not too distant future.

PK: First quarter, second quarter?

DE: In the not too distant future.

YouTube officials will want me to note that the site isn’t talking about charging consumers for the stuff that’s on the site now and that none of this is a done deal yet. Noted.

But YouTube’s plans synch up with plenty of other video players hoping or planning to do something along the same lines. Hulu, for instance, is trying to put together some kind of premium service that will sit on top of its free site. And Apple (AAPL) is exploring its own subscription service for TV shows.

Eun, like every other Google executive, doesn’t like to get nailed down on specifics about YouTube’s performance or plans. But he did walk through a few other things of note with me in the interview:

• The role of DoubleClick, the display ad network Google acquired last year, in boosting the site’s revenue.
• The prospects for YouTube’s eventual profitability, which he says is also “in the not too distant future.”
• The structure of YouTube’s deal with Vevo, big music’s video site, and chances that the company could do something similar with other types of clips.

If you want to skip past some awkward introductory stuff, head to the 1:40 mark in the video below. And turn up the volume after the preroll ad because Eun is a soft talker.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091216/youtube-paid-video-could-come-in-the-not-too-distant-future/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091216/youtubes-most-popular-clips-10-videos-a-lot-of-music-and-half-a-billion-views/ http://allthingsd.com/20091216/youtubes-most-popular-clips-10-videos-a-lot-of-music-and-half-a-billion-views/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:46:52 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=14040 One more argument for Vevo, big music’s new video site, via YouTube, the company that’s powering the site: A list of the year’s most popular clips–which are dominated by music videos.

Music videos are so popular on Google’s (GOOG) video site, in fact, that YouTube had to break its most watched list into two lists–music videos and everything else. If it hadn’t, then people like you and me, who have only a vague idea who Pitbull and Keri Hilson are, would have been totally baffled.

Speaking of baffling, you’ll note that two of the 10 videos below aren’t actually from YouTube at all, but from France’s DailyMotion. For whatever reason–at this point I’ve basically given up trying to figure out the vagaries of YouTube’s rights and clearances–YouTube still isn’t letting people embed the Susan Boyle clip. And U.S. viewers, at least, can’t watch the Hilson clip at all. Go figure.

Most Watched YouTube videos (Global):

1. Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent (120+ million views)

Susan Boyle – Singer – Britains Got Talent 2009
by matrix1087

2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)

3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)

4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)

5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views)

Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global):

1. Pitbull “I Know You Want Me” (82+ million views)

2. Miley Cyrus “The Climb” (64+ million views)

3. Miley Cyrus “Party in the U.S.A.” (54+ million views)

4. The Lonely Island “I’m on a Boat” (48+ million views)

5. Keri Hilson “Knock You Down” (35+ million views)

Keri Hilson – Knock You Down
by UniversalMusicGroup

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