Major Labels Consider Hulu Partnership, New Music Video Site as Alternatives to YouTube

Labels are continuing to grasp for ways to milk revenue out of their videos that appear for free online. Following Warner Music's exit from YouTube last week, the majors are not only exploring a partnership with the NBC-owned video site Hulu but considering launching their own stand-alone music-video site.

According to reports, two major labels are considering an additional partnership with Hulu, the News Corp./NBC video venture that's mostly used to stream NBC shows. While Hulu isn't a household name like YouTube, the site drew ad revenues in the $70 million range this year, not far behind YouTube's $100 million, and the two companies are expected to pull in even more ad money in 2009.

The four major labels are also considering their own video site as they seek new avenues to showcase videos that aren't being played on MTV (the Website MTV Music, however, has emerged as a viable alternative to YouTube for music-video streaming). Even if the majors were to join forces and create their own streaming site, their preexisting deals with YouTube would remain intact. No concrete plans have been released, but there has been talk of a premium service on YouTube, where users would pay a fee in order to access special areas of the site.Of course, all the talk about Hulu and a standalone, major-label ran service could just be posturing by WMG to get better terms in their new contract with YouTube if the two sides were to agree.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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