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YouTube has announced it is teaming up with music video website VEVO to bring thousands of official clips from the likes of Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kanye West and U2 onto the YouTube 2.0 app for Android, available around the world.
The firm says users will need to be running at least Android 2.2 (Froyo) on their handsets to have access to the videos, and the app will come pre-installed on many Android 2.3 devices like the Nexus S.
YouTube has added several features in its new version, which it says makes it much easier to discover and enjoy music videos on a mobile phone.
Firstly, music videos will now be clearly marked with a ‘music note’ badge, and users will also be able to read the artist’s bio while watching the clip. YouTube has also made it easier to find more tracks by the same artist using the ‘artist tracks’ tab, as well as similar music with the ‘related artists’ tab.
“Mobile is a fast emerging space and more and more people have smart devices,” YouTube’s Chris Dale told RCR. Indeed, YouTube now exceeds 200 million views a day on mobile, a 3x increase in 2010.
“It’s a natural evolution of YouTube’s strategy to envision being on every device,” Dale added.
VEVO’s extensive music library isn’t the only thing YouTube is excited about, however, with the firm also announcing that as of now, tens of thousands of YouTube partner videos will also sport pre-roll ads which will appear on the YouTube 2.0 app for Android.
This, says the firm, not only expands distribution opportunities for partners like VEVO, but also opens up more revenue to partners distributing their content to mobile, and that’s a big deal because the mobile ad market is growing fast and set to surpass $1 billion in the US in 2011.
Although YouTube has tested ads on mobile over the years, this is the firm’s largest step in mobile monetization to date.
“It’s the first time we’re really monetizing partner content directly,” Dale told us adding that the firm was excited to be able to offer its partners the chance to distribute their content across several platforms.
Those interested in downloading the app, can do so from the Android Market.
