Iman Jalali

Vevo, the joint venture between Google/YouTube and major record labels finally launched tonight, but it definitely hasn’t been a smooth one. In conjunction with the launch tonight they were supposed to premiere new videos from Mariah Carey, 50 Cent and Mary J Blige, but technical difficulties have made the site pretty useless so far tonight.

As I’ve mentioned before Vevo is being built up to become the “Hulu of music videos” and it definitely has a strong shot of doing just that. With the launch roughly 30,000 videos will be hosted on Vevo, but the crazy part is HD videos won’t be available till next year. I don’t understand that… What is kind of cool though is Vevo will include synchronized and integrated lyrics and there won’t be a preroll ad every time you watch a video, ads will be served based on aggregate usage.

Speaking of ads on Vevo… All ad inventory and sales will be done directly through Vevo and they’ve already put together a strong roster of advertisers including: McDonald’s, AT&T, Nikon, Dove, Colgate-Palmolive, Mastercard, Axe, Infiniti and Stoli. These advertisers will pay a near premium rate of around $20 to $45 for every 1,000-page views, Vevo Chief Executive Rio Caraeff said in an interview.

Vevo will certainly be a nice little income stream for the declining record companies, but Bono thinks it’ll be a little more than just a little income. At the Vevo launch party tonight Bono said on stage: “We are here to launch the great cash cow that was the music business. But we are also here to celebrate a new model for the music business. It’s also a great vehicle that will allow fans to go behind the scenes with their favorite artists.”

What’s really going to determine the faith of Vevo will be the partnerships Vevo is able to create with not just record companies, but also other media companies. One step in the right direction is that both AOL and CBS are joining the Vevo music network and Warner Music might be signing up to join soon.

It has potential that’s for sure… two companies in particular should be worried, MTV and MySpace. MTV needs a huge strategy and focus shift and stop pretending it is the premiere venue for music videos and MySpace has made a huge shift towards music and Vevo’s launch definitely won’t help them succeed…. survive.