Music Techie News: PluggedIn Media Technology Rivals YouTube -

[Mumbo Sauce]

By ETHAN SMITH

In a bet on the future of professionally produced online video content, technology start-up PluggedIn Media Inc. is set Wednesday to begin letting users view for free near-DVD-quality music videos licensed from three of the four biggest music companies, along with information about artists and links to buy merchandise and concert tickets.

The strategy represents a challenge to the notion that user-generated content -- the homemade clips that populate YouTube, MySpace and other popular Web sites -- is more lucrative or desirable than is high-quality content created by professionals.

Despite the large amount of homemade video on Google Inc.'s YouTube and elsewhere, PluggedIn Chief Executive Jeffrey Somers said professionally produced material "seems to be what people engage with the most." Additionally, he said, advertisers are more willing to buy on sites featuring professional content, as opposed to the Wild West-like sites that emphasize user-generated content.

The Santa Monica, Calif., company is initially focusing on music videos, but it is considering offering other kinds of entertainment, said Mr. Somers. That could put the newcomer in direct competition with Hulu, a popular online video service that is a joint venture of News Corp.'s Fox and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal. News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

PluggedIn's backers include Overbrook Entertainment, the film-and-television-production company owned by Will Smith and producer James Lassiter. Guy Primus, head of interactive media at Overbrook, said his company made an investment of an undisclosed size in the new venture about two months ago, after seeing a demonstration of its technology. Mr. Primus called PluggedIn's video service "a stunning experience." He said Overbrook is in discussions to use PluggedIn's technology to deliver entertainment content besides music videos, but declined to be more specific.

For its launch, PluggedIn.com is to feature 10,000 videos licensed from Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group Ltd. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. Those record labels are to receive an undisclosed share of the site's advertising revenue. Though the company doesn't have a licensing agreement with the fourth of the big music companies, Warner Music Group Corp., it says it has secured a limited number of Warner's videos for its launch. Additionally the site is to include one million pages dedicated to profiles of musicians, culling content from the artists' official Web sites, Wikipedia pages, blogs and other sources. Those are to include links to download music from Amazon.com Inc.'s MP3 music store and to buy memorabilia such as T-shirts from other vendors.

The site is using technology licensed from Move Networks Inc. of American Fork, Utah.

Rio Caraeff, executive vice president at Universal Music's eLabs, said that despite the dominance of YouTube, there is room online for other video providers. "I don't feel like YouTube is the be-all, end-all for the music fan," he said.

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