VUDU has announced today that it will begin offering music and video for free through its service, fully ad-supported.
The deal, made with Brightcove, will initially only include Sony music and videos. The company hopes to eventually add long-form content to the new service but there is no set roadmap.
The move will make VUDU one of the first media hubs to try to add advertisements as part of the working business model. Rivals such as the Apple TV and Roku provide access to existing services or use the standard pay-per-title model.
The ad-backed model has not been thoroughly tested but for the most part has failed miserably with the notable exception being Hulu, the video site which continues to see huge growth.
Result for: offering music
In January, Last.FM began offering music streaming on-demand instead of by simple genre or keyword searches. Three times a day users can listen to a track of their choosing regardless of artist or genre.
With the format change also came affiliate partnerships with iTunes, Amazon and 7Digital that allows Last.FM users to click through from any song they are listening to and purchase the tracks from said affiliates.
It seems the recent change in format has led to substantial added sales, a 119 percent overall increase in cd and download sales through the affiliates.
Martin Stiksel, Last.fm’s founder, feels the stats demonstrate that free on-demand music will encourage physical purchases and that the music industry should adopt more on demand models. “In just over two months it’s become clear that people will buy CDs and downloads if they get access to the kind of service we offer. No one else can give music fans this amount of music for free — but more importantly also drive their discovery, as we do through our unique recommendation engine. That’s why people are sticking around on Last.fm — minutes spent on site are up 118% month-on-month — and discovering new music to listen to and buy,” he added.
Lets hope the trend continues.
