Vevo, Telstra partner to bring music videos to the lounge

Vevo is pushing out more music videos into Australian living rooms through a new partnership with Telstra TV, announced Wednesday (Sept. 9).

Through the arrangement, Telstra TV users will have access to more than 450,000 licensed clips across all genres, including old-school tunes and current chart hits.

It’s another leap forward for Vevo in these parts, after launching in Sydney earlier this year with an office headed up by Steve Sos, formerly Shazam’s Managing Director, Asia Pacific.

Vevo is now one of 40-plus apps available for download on Telstra TV, the streaming service owned and operated by Telstra, along with Spotify, Amazon Prime Video, Kayo and more.

“We are thrilled to partner with Telstra to bring our massive catalogue of music videos to Telstra TV,” comments Sos, Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand, Vevo.

“Being able to tap into Telstra’s impressive reach and distribution is another step towards our goal of bringing music videos back to the living room,” he continues. “In doing so we are also able to significantly increase our growing pool of inventory on the big screen for our commercial partners.”

Vevo

Australians this year have spent more time on their sofas than anticipated, and that’s created opportunities for streaming companies, Vevo included.

“In this ‘new normal’,” explains Rebecca Haagsma, Media Executive, Product & Technology, Telstra, in a blog post, “fans are increasingly turning to premium music videos to discover new artists, keep up with their current favourites, and reminisce with their past.”

The new deals slots neatly into Vevo’s mission to bring-back music videos to armchair anoraks.

It’s apparently working, with views on its platform across connected TVs growing by over 20% year-on-year for the past two years.

Telstra TV is going “from strength to strength,” notes Telstra’s Haagsma, with more than 1.65m SVOD devices shipped to customers to-date.

“We know our users love and enjoy the range of music content available via Telstra TV today and the addition of Vevo will only enrich that experience, and further extend on our ambition to become the best aggregator of entertainment for our customers,” she says in a statement, issued from London.

Telstra TV

Vevo launched 2009 in North America as a top-end music video on-demand library, through a joint venture of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Abu Dhabi Media and YouTube owner Alphabet, with a minority stake owned by Warner Music Group.

The service rolled out the following year in the U.K. & Ireland.

Next up was Australia, where it arrived in 2012 through an exclusive partnership with local digital content business MCM Media.

Today, the music video service reaches 26 billion global views each month, or roughly three clips watched for every man, woman and child on earth.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.