Vevo Ramps Up Indie Music Program for Emerging Artists

Lesser-known artists account for 38 percent of the video platform’s content, executive says

Vevo Indie Music Week

Despite superstar artists like Beyonce, Rihanna and Taylor Swift, the highly trafficked video network Vevo is looking to the indie music space for continued growth.

The platform, which offers the lion’s share of its content on YouTube, clocks in billions of views and millions of channel subscribers for the established acts that dominate charts and U.S. arenas, but the brand is looking to break and nurture artists much earlier in their careers.

Vevo dscvr is an entry-level program for upstarts that get the full weight of Vevo’s support — from strategic pushes through a newly updated smartphone app to original video productions financed by the company, which was born from a collaboration between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

“We’re working in a way that allows us to service both the artist and fandoms at the same time,” Jordan Glickson, Director of Programming and Industry Relations at Vevo, told TheWrap.

Dscvr, which helped bring exposure to Janelle Monae’s Wondaland Records breakout Jidenna last year, will now feature three artists of the month through the end of the year. It’s not a bad investment, considering indie artists furnish 38 percent of the content on Vevo, exceeding Sony’s 34 percent contribution and UMG’s 28 percent according to Glickson.

The company also recently sponsored Indie Music Week, founded by not-for-profit trade group A2IM, which represents a coalition of 391 independently-owned American music labels.

“The key thing is that we’re playing artists before radio is playing them; we’re showing original or third-party videos for new acts. We know the established artists are going to bring people in, but it’s important to us to have programs for artists at every level,” Glickson said.

Check out dscvr here.

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