More Music Label Oddities

from the where-do-they-find-these-people dept

Following the earlier note about how clueless Sony Music is comes the news that Universal has (once again) gotten confused about what's promotional to sell an end product, and what's an end product on its own. Apparently, they've been pushing various bloggers to stream promotional videos on their sites. However, someone has now decided that these videos aren't promotional, but something worth selling. So, now, not only do they lose the promotional value of these videos in getting people to actually spend money, they also aren't going to sell many of these videos. Brilliant strategic planning by the record labels. Jake writes "On Friday, February 25, I received a message from my New Media contact at Interscope Geffen A&M. It said: Hi Everyone, As some of you may or may not have heard, UMG is putting in place a new Pay Per Play Video Policy. This means that we will no longer be servicing video streams for free use. I will continue to service audio Streams and fulfill online publicity requests. This also means that as of Monday Feb 28th, all of Interscope's current videos will be suspended. If you have links that are live on your site, I would suggest you take them off or they will just redirect to our Artist's site. If you are interested in striking a deal with UMG to play videos, please let me know and I will put you in contact with the right person." Understanding the difference between what's promotional and what's sellable is going to be the key to surviving as a content player in the digital age. Universal is clearly heading in the wrong direction.

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