Feisty online music video site MUZU.TV is taking on the might of YouTube in the music video jukebox space and has developed a technology that allows music lovers to create video playlists, arrange the video queue and add in videos based on artist recommendations.
MUZU.TV enables labels and bands to broadcast their music video on the web and get paid wherever it goes. The site serves more than 15 million videos in the UK each month and works with the big four record labels: Warner, Sony, Universal and EMI.
The Dublin-based company pays content owners half of all the ad revenue generated from display ads on their MUZU TV channels and “in-video” adverts within their MUZU TV players, both on MUZU TV and when players are embedded on external sites like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo or other external sites.
What is MUZU TV’s Jukebox?
MUZU’s Graeme Slattery told Siliconrepublic.com that Jukebox is like a free ‘”Spotify for video”, but with the significant addition of these in-built recommendations which opens up a whole world of new music for users to discover.
Slattery said that unlike most music playlist websites which interrupt the flow of playlists with the forced intrusion of pre-roll advertising, MUZU.TV’s Jukebox avoids these pitfalls and ensures a continuous viewing experience.
He said that while MUZU.TV is an advertising-funded free music website, it has been careful to leverage more innovative ad formats such as “skinning” the outside of the video player with premium entertainment-related advertisement, which doesn’t interrupt the viewing experience in any way.
“The problem up to now with most video sites is that every time you search for something you’re gone from the page you’re watching. The new Jukebox provides you with a player that gives you a pre-populated playlist if you’ve searched for artists like 2-Pac, for example, as well as the option to get suggested similar artists.”
He said users can then save their playlists and play in continuous mode during parties. The technology also features the ability to queue up songs in the tradition of jukeboxes of yore.
“You can also drag and drop videos to change the order and move things around. We believe this is what MUZU is all about and what music video online should be, too. It brings the music video experience to a whole new level,” Slattery said.
By John Kennedy
Photo: MUZU TV’s Jukebox
