Rumour has it the Universal Music Group is looking to change the way it charges for the airing of its music videos, opting for a fee-per-stream model. That change would affect any media platform offering music video on demand, which currently includes
Yahoo's Launch and AOL Music. The income would be split between the artist, songwriters and, of course, the label.
Although
Universal is the only record company seemingly actively considering building new revenue models around the music video, insiders reckon that the other major labels would quickly adopt any new system that delivers new income.
There is an increasing feeling in the industry that pop promos are an untapped resource that labels too often write off as a mere marketing tool. Having discovered, mainly through the efforts of third parties, that considerable new revenues can be gained by delivering existing assets via new media (ie MP3 downloads and ringtones to date), there is a growing feeling that charging for video-on-demand might be the next new cash cow.
How those media platforms that offer the video-on-demand services will react to Universal's proposal remains to be seen. Many currently offer video-on-demand at no cost to consumers as a
'added-value' service - so they will be concerned about any plans to start charging per stream.