We are very excited to announce that in conjunction with our partner, TubeMogul, we will soon be publishing a new quarterly research report that will examine trends in the online video industry and include a variety of interesting data points from our wide-reaching customer base. Every quarter, the report will also highlight a specific industry vertical segment, beginning this time around with the music industry.
Brightcove has a unique perspective on the music industry, as we are the online video platform behind the "Big Four" music labels - Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music. The Brightcove platform powers hundreds of music label websites, artist websites and portals for these labels, as well as for their subsidiaries around the world.
The industry snapshot report on the music industry reveals a variety of interesting trends and statistics, several of which were discussed in depth during our well attended panel on "The Future of Online Music Videos" with Atlantic Records, VEVO, Sony Music Entertainment and the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) at SXSW last month.
Research Findings
Today there is so much going on in the music industry both in terms of distribution of video, to changing business models around video, to the format itself. The forces behind the distribution of music have evolved and are helping labels of all sizes to drive increased fan engagement with music video content.
Video Views
Based on comScore data and our own platform data with TubeMogul, in January alone VEVO had around 226 million video views, while individual artist and label websites accounted for around 25 million views. Over the past three months, the artist and label websites have an aggregated run rate of around 23 million video views per month.
Consumer Engagement
Consumers tend to be more engaged with online music video content on artist and label websites as compared to video sharing sites. We found that consumers watch an average of nearly 10% more of each video when it is being viewed on an artist / label site compared to a video sharing site. 29% of consumers also watched videos through to completion on artist/label sites versus 12% on video sharing sites.
Social Media Interaction
Also of interest is the way music fans are interacting with video content via social media outlets like Twitter. Our research found consumers that find online music videos via Twitter watch an average of 2:30 minutes per stream compared to the 1:30 minutes viewed on average by consumers discovering online music videos via search engines like Yahoo!. However, 76% of online music videos viewed on artist and label sites are found through Google searches.
Global Comparison
On a global scale, we found that the majority of online music video views are occurring in the U.S. (40%), followed by Japan (10%), UK (9%) and Germany (3%).
It will be interesting to see how these figures evolve over the next year, particularly as sites like VEVO continue to expand their reach. For now, the data points to the fact that consumer interest in online music video content remains high, and the rise of mobile video and outlets like Twitter and Facebook will surely help artists and labels around the world to increase customer engagement with their video content in the future.