Music from CinemaNow
How many people regularly watch music videos? I wonder. It’s hard for me to believe it’s a gigantic number, but the recent volume of activity to provide music video content online suggests my imagination must be way off.
Just a few weeks ago, Warner Music announced it was joining with Premium TV to offer its own video collection on a private label Warner site. At the same time EMI announced that it had struck a deal with YouTube to provide EMI music video content for display through the YouTube site.
Today, movie download service CinemaNow announced it too was climbing on the music video train. It announced plans to resuscitate a prior effort to sell music videos too. The Watchmusichere.com site is relaunching today with videos from Warner Music Group available for sale and viewing on portable devices.
Near DVD-quality videos will sell for $1.99 each. A single downloaded file can be transferred to three devices (computer, laptop, portable etc). The videos will not play on either iPods or iPhones. As a further restriction, users must also use Internet Explorer to download from the site (Firefox and Safari are not supported). Through July 21, there will be 1,600 titles available from Warner. Later, other labels and titles will be added.
It’s difficult to believe the site will catch on given the breadth of choices available to consumers. It’s also hard to understand what’s going on at Warner beyond experimentation: they seem to be putting their content everywhere in the hopes that if they bet on a hundred horses, one is bound to win the race.
Maybe it will work but no iPods, no Firefox, that’s rather limiting a starting point. Music Videos on TV are dead, but online they are starting to become ubiquitous, at least when it comes to availability.
