Sony BMG lets Fans place Music Videos onto their own web sites

Filed in archive Internet TV on June 20, 2006

Digital video is all about how physical distribution is less and less important and how anyone with content can connect with viewers. Sony BMG is going directly to consumers with an internet TV play. The service, called Musicbox Video, distributes music videos from Sony BMG artists across its fan sites and even down to the MySpace pages of music-obsessed fans.

Brightcove is Sony BMG's partner in this endeavor. I have found Brightcove to be an interesting business that makes syndicating content across the Internet fairly easy. But they also create, distribute and sell advertising into that content.

The flash-based video player features several "channels" -- top 20, rock, pop and R&B -- and can be found at the artists' websites. Fans can e-mail a video link to a friend or copy the HTML code to post the video in blogs or on their MySpace pages.

Pre-roll advertising will run before the music videos launch and another ad will load between every other video. The ads, sold by Brightcove under a revenue-sharing agreement, will be another way for the music industry to pick up some of the dollars it has lost to peer-to-peer file sharing.