Vevo plots TV expansion

US music video service Vevo is planning to expand onto more TV platforms this year and is gearing up for a UK rollout for its recently launched US and Canadian online linear music channel.

Speaking at the FT Digital Media conference, Vevo president and CEO Rio Caraeff said that in the last 30 days, “51% of our streaming volume in the US happened on a smartphone or a connected TV” – which translates to roughly 500 million streams.

“The majority of streaming volume on TV is coming through games consoles like Xbox, it’s coming through devices like Rokus. This year we’ll launch on maybe 10 more TV platforms, so it’s a big area of investment for us,” said Caraeff.

He added that a quarter of Vevo’s 4 billion worldwide monthly streams are now happening on smartphones. “The future of video for us is very much the reality today, which is mobile and TV. We merged our mobile and TV product teams together, so that way we’re making applications and experiences that are aware of each other,” he added.

Speaking about Vevo’s linear music channel, which is available now in North America, Caraeff said that the “full multi-cast, programmed, linear experience” was designed to compliment its VoD offering. He said: “we’re bringing to the UK later this year.”

“We crave shared experiences, we crave to be programmed to, and while we live in a world where you can watch everything on-demand, there is still a time and a place where you want to not have to think about it – you want to have somebody programme audio or video to you,” said Caraeff.

He also said that the firm was also spending more than US$10 million per year on original programming, and that 35% of its revenues lastyear came from the sale of that content. This includes videos that combine music with topics such as fashion, sports, travel and even food.

“If we didn’t produce original programming we would have less differentiation in the marketplace, we’d have less opportunity to define and build our identity and our brand, which we’re just getting started at, and we would have less revenue,” said Caraeff.