Kudos launches new YouTube “Automatic Video Creation and Delivery” (AVCD)

One of the most significant changes in the digital marketplace we have witnessed over the last 12 months is how YouTube has moved from being perceived as an irritation to a becoming a significant revenue stream.  Following Merlin’s successful negotiations we have been able to really engage with this service for the benefit of our labels.

We are now stepping this engagement up a gear.

YouTube is currently one of our fastest growing digital revenue streams.  Up to now this income has been predominantly UGC (“User Generated Content”) matched income, where we have monetised the 3rd party usage of our distributed labels’ repertoire using Google’s “Content ID” technology which scours the service for videos which contain matching audio.  At the same time we have also been working with our labels to optimize the monetisation on their individual YouTube channels.

We have now launched a service that enables our participating labels to deliver automatically generated videos for any (or indeed every) track in their catalogue straight to their nominated YouTube channel(s) with a few mouse clicks.  These Kudos generated “videos” (the audio track accompanied by sleeve or label artwork) are fully tagged and optimised both for search and cross promotion/upsell.  They are also treated by YouTube as “official” videos and potentially attract Premium Advertising when compared to an equivalent UGC video.

YouTube is, by far, the most popular streaming service in the world and is the 2nd most popular search engine in its own right.  It has a 25% user penetration across Europe (double that for under 25s). It is the 3rd most popular music discovery tool (after radio and personal referral).  In 2010, over 30% of all YouTube views were music (a figure that I can only assume has risen).  Our AVCD Service, coupled with our label manager’s guidance on best practice will help ensure our distributed labels extract maximum return from this important service.