Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 4:42 PM PT

 

The Fresh Prince of Online Music Vids

PluggedIn, a startup backed by actor and rapper Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment that’s aiming to be an online hub for music videos, will launch tomorrow, according to the New York Times.

For once, this celebrity-backed video venture has chosen a worthwhile project, because there really isn’t a good place to stream legal versions of all the world’s music videos, despite the fact that they do so well online. But PluggedIn hasn’t yet executed that, either; apparently it doesn’t have all the major music labels signed on. According to the Times (where we got the screenshot above), the site will offer 10,000 videos from Universal, Sony BMG and EMI at launch.

As PluggedIn describes itself on its landing page:

We pull together the best content — HD-quality videos, web videos, photos, playlists, Wikipedia, blogs, news and more — so that fans can easily find and save the stuff they like, share their music taste, discover new music through recommendations, and experience videos like never before.

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen said in August 2006 that he wanted to index every music video ever made within 18 months. Though YouTube has struck some significant music deals, that deadline passed earlier this year without being met.

I could find only one legal version of a Will Smith video on YouTube, but embedding was disabled, so no Just the Two of Us for you unless you click through.

 

Sphere
Topic: Startups
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. Dope!

    Yogi on April 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm - Permalink

  2. try http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/

    just checked and Just the Two of Us is their and it is embeddable….

    yahoo gets not props for anything these days….

    SM on April 15th, 2008 at 5:36 pm - Permalink

  3. Thanks SM. Should have looked there!

    Liz Gannes on April 15th, 2008 at 9:47 pm - Permalink

  4. Thanks, Liz! Jeff from PluggedIn here. We’re in the midst of both ingesting more content from Sony BMG and discussions with Warner on licensing their content. We certainly plan to add more content over time. The big difference in what we offer is the quality of the video content- we’re the first site to stream in broadcast and HD quality. I hope you check the site tomorrow- and share your feedback!

    Thanks!

    Jeff

    Jeff, PluggedIn on April 15th, 2008 at 11:12 pm - Permalink

  5. [...] It turns out that NewTeeVee (great online video site) wrote about a Music Video startup site today. UPDATE 2: I’m really, [...]

    Ampers & Dot » Blog Archive » YouTube Search Results for: Anything on April 16th, 2008 at 10:29 am - Permalink

  6. Hi Liz,
    Check out these 3 sites operated by my company, Blastro Networks:
    http://www.blastro.com/
    http://www.roxwel.com/
    http://www.yallwire.com/

    High quality & legal streaming video and original shows.

    ferrin on April 18th, 2008 at 9:57 am - Permalink

  7. it seems to be US only. too bad :(

    but i prefer pitchfork.tv though

    tomi on April 23rd, 2008 at 5:50 am - Permalink

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