The popular Vevo music video service is phasing out its own music video platforms in favor of YouTube, Variety reports. The company announced its plans in a blog post yesterday, stating that it “will phase out elements of our owned and operated platforms” in order to focus in its primary objective, which is “to grow the commercial and promotional value of music videos.” The post goes on to note that the company’s catalog “will continue to reach a growing audience on YouTube.” Vevo, which is owned primarily by the major labels, has long had a distribution deal with YouTube, which through Google also owns a small stake in the company.
While Vevo has traditionally reached most of its audience through YouTube, for the past few years it had tried to lessen its dependence on the service with its own set of apps for mobile devices and set-top boxes, and in fact even toyed at once time with the idea of launching a paid subscription service.
According to Variety, this strategy was primarily driven by former CEO Erik Huggers, however Huggers left the company last December, followed by Vevo’s head of product, Mark Hall, along with CTO Alex Nunes, after which a significant portion of the company’s product and engineering team was also laid off.
With this week’s announcement, Vevo will now officially be retiring almost all of its apps — iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile — along with its consumer-facing website. Vevo will be providing users with a way to import their Vevo playlists directly to YouTube.
