What is Vevo and Why Does it Make the Videos on YouTube so Slow?

Regular YouTube users have noticed that since December, presentation of the site's music videos has dramatically changed. Most official music videos are now presented by a company called Vevo.

Vevo has wreaked havoc on playback of the site's music videos. Videos that used to play with no problems are now frequently caught in endless buffering loops. Users are leaving angry comments on Vevo videos by the dozens, but the technical problems continue.

What is Vevo? And why is Vevo making all the music videos on YouTube so slow? Here are a few answers.

What is Vevo: Just a company that makes all the videos on YouTube slow?

Vevo is co-owned by Sony and Universal Music Group. Always looking for new ways to make money (and perhaps new ways to stick it to their customers), the major record companies decided that they needed to make bigger profits from YouTube's use of their music videos.

So the labels created Vevo and arranged an agreement with YouTube that all official music videos had to be shown through Vevo. The artists have no say in this - their official YouTube pages received "VEVO" appended to the original names. Lady Gaga's official YouTube page, for instance, is now called "LadyGagaVEVO."

Doing this broke all the links to the old videos. So if you run a blog or website and had links to YouTube music videos, or had them embedded on your page, chances are they no longer work.

Vevo also hosts its own music video site, vevo.com, where users can search for and play music videos. But the site has been ridiculed for its lack of content. Many major artists aren't featured on vevo.com.

Music videos on YouTube played fine before Vevo came along. Now, they are plagued by technical issues. Thus far, like many of the ideas dreamed up by the big record companies, Vevo has been a total disaster.

What is Vevo: Playback issues frustrate users

Go to YouTube and find a Vevo video. Try to watch the video the whole way through. Chances are at some point the video will stop playing for no apparent reason. This is not the usual "buffering" that sometimes occurs on YouTube videos while they're loading. This is a new kind of problem in which the streaming video gets stuck. A "spinning wheel" appears, informing the user of a playback problem. If you're lucky, eventually the video will resume playing again.

In my viewing of Kid Cudi's brilliant video for "Day 'N' Nite," the video stalled at 0:30, again at 1:52, and again twice more before finishing. If you don't notice any issues, try watching another video or two.

I also attempted to watch Passion Pit's "The Reeling." Because of all the hiccups, it took more than ten minutes to view the entire video. Like many users, I simply don't have the patience to sit through these interminable playback delays.

The extent of the technical issues users experience is based partly on their hardware. Users with faster connections and more powerful computers see fewer issues, but they still see occasional problems. Users with just average computers see a ton of technical issues. And that's why this problem is such a big deal. If the average user can't comfortably view music videos on YouTube, he or she is simply going to start going elsewhere.

Here's another disturbing problem: When a video gets caught in one of these endless states of loading, users can't manually rewind or fast-forward the video. It's stuck in a virtual black hole. The only recourse is to wait out the problem or to reload the page in the browser and start the video from the beginning.

These technical problems are happening on almost all of the Vevo videos on the site. It's stunning that YouTube didn't adequately troubleshoot this issue before rolling it out. And it's stunning that YouTube and Vevo seem content to allow the problems to continue.

What is Vevo: User response to the slow music videos

In the past, users could find numerous clips of the same music video on YouTube. If you searched for Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me," you would find the official version on Taylor's YouTube page, and you'd find a bunch of copies of the video made by other users.

But YouTube has been busy removing most of the non-official music videos from its site. So not only are the Vevo videos unreliable, but users have no other options. If you want to watch "You Belong With Me" or any Taylor Swift video on YouTube, you're stuck with the Vevo clips.

Users on YouTube and on message boards have not been shy about expressing their displeasure. One viewer wrote, "I want my music videos back. Everything was fine the way it was before." Another said, "Vevo is crap, it doesn't work. It loads, then it skips every few seconds. I know it was made to make music videos better, but it does the opposite."

A third commenter posted, "This is ridiculous. I don't use youtube since Vevo came on. The videos are slow and have to buffer constantly (even though the 'buffer bar' is already 'loaded'). In order to get a decent video I go to mtv.com or vh1.com."

And these are just some of the comments that are suitable for publication. Many of the others contain profanity or are in ALL CAPS to express users' outrage.

One comment summed up Vevo best: "Is this the 'New Coke' of the 2000s?"

If YouTube and Vevo don't institute a fix for this problem soon, the New Coke analogy might turn out to be right-on.

What is Vevo: When is YouTube going to fix Vevo?

The only response from Vevo about these issues has come via the site's official Twitter page. Presumably, Vevo is getting a ton of tweets and messages from outraged music video fans, because many of Vevo's tweets are attempts to placate angry consumers.

"Contrary to common belief, we are not in fact professional hijackers," read one recent Vevo tweet. Another tweet attempted to explain what Vevo is and tacitly acknowledged the technical problems: "It's a combination of super high quality videos and streaming. We're working on optimizing better for all speeds!

What is Vevo: Summary

It's hard to recall a case in the history of online streaming video in which such a widespread technical issue gone unaddressed for so long. Angry users are being ignored. Even the media are largely ignoring the issue - they reported on the initial problems when Vevo launched in December but have largely overlooked the issue since.

Vevo is not going away - YouTube is making too much money to allow that to happen. But many YouTube users would love nothing more than for the Vevo-YouTube partnership to go away just as quickly as it arrived.

Sources:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/31/vevo_youtube_api_muziic/

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=2753e8b7d8caf54b&hl=en#all

http://twitter.com/vevo