Universal, YouTube team up for service

NEW YORK, April 9 (UPI) -- Universal Music Group says it has teamed up with YouTube to start VEVO, a new online music and video service.

Doug Morris, chairman and chief executive officer of Universal Music Group, and Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Google Inc., made the announcement Thursday.

YouTube is a Google subsidiary.

In addition to VEVO, YouTube has renewed and extended its partnership with UMG that allows users to continue creating and watching user-generated videos containing UMG sound recordings and Universal Music Publishing Group's compositions on YouTube through various territories around the world. The two companies said they will also share advertising revenue on YouTube and VEVO, which is to debut later this year.

YouTube will provide the technology infrastructure that will power VEVO and host UMG's extensive library of professionally-created music videos on the new site, UMG said.

On YouTube, this content will be exclusively available through VEVO.com and a new VEVO channel through a special VEVO branded embedded player.

"VEVO will bring the most compelling premium music video content and services to the world's single largest online video audience," Morris said in a statement. "We believe that at launch, VEVO will already have more traffic than any other music video site in the United States and in the world. And this traffic represents the most sought after demographic for advertisers, especially as advertising dollars continue their shift from old media to new. VEVO will be uniquely positioned to monetize this opportunity and a host of others as we grow it to become 'the' destination for premium music video content online."