YouTube Looking For Indie Bands

YouTube has expanded its partner program and has introduced "Musicians Wanted" aimed at getting independent bands or artists to submit music videos to the site.

Interested independent bands or artist can apply for Musicians Wanted through YouTube's Partner Program. Those who are accepted will have their own page where they can add details about where they will be playing, provide links to buying music and showcase their music videos.

Independent artists will also share YouTube's advertising revenue generated by their music video plays as well as when videos are embedded on other websites, such as music blogs.

The YouTube Blog offers more details. "So whether you make hip-hop, folk, noise-rock, jazz or a genre of your own invention, we are looking for all types of original music video content."

"One thing to keep in mind is that right now this program only supports video content by U.S.-based artists, though there are plans to roll out the program more widely in the future."
 

Dailymotion In Music Video Deal With Warner

Warner Music Group has entered into a licensing agreement with online video sharing site Dailymotion.

Warner will offer music videos via Dailymotion's website in the U.S., Europe and North Africa.

"We are delighted that our large and growing repertoire of quality music videos includes content from Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, EMI and leading independent The Orchard," said Joy Marcus, General Manager of Dailymotion U.S.

"This breadth and depth of repertoire is a big win for our users who, quite simply, love music. Advertisers will also be pleased with new opportunities to reach a large audience of highly-engaged music fans."

Visitors to Dailymotion will have ad-supported access to music videos, concerts and interviews from Warner Music's local and international acts. Under the terms of agreement, registered users will be able to create and share video playlists. The first videos are slated to be available within a month.

Outside the U.S., Warner Music and Dailymotion will work together on the sale of targeted advertising and sponsorships embedded in the videos. Warner Music will manage sales inside the U.S.

"Dailymotion understands that offering official artist content is one of the most powerful ways to attract an interested, interactive audience," said Leanne Sharman, Vice President, Commercial Development, Warner Music Europe.

"This partnership further strengthens our premium video strategy, which provides our roster of artists a flexible, wide-reaching distribution footprint through which to monetize and promote their music."
 

Hulu is Seeing Record Numbers

comScore Video Metrix has released its monthly look at the performance of online video content properties. As usual, Google sites dominate the picture, largely because of YouTube, which gets 99% of Google's video views.

The real story, however, is that Hulu is achieving record numbers. The site ranked number 2 (though significantly behind Google with 3.1% market share compared to Google's 37.7) during the month of October, with an all time high of 856 million videos viewed.

On top of that, the average Hulu viewer watched 20.1 videos during the month, representing another record for the site. This amounts to about 2 hours of videos per viewer.

Here's a look at the top ten online video content properties for the month of October:

Some other highlights (not Hulu-specific) from comScore's findings: 

- The top video ad networks in terms of their actual delivered reach were: BrightRoll Video Network with 16.5 percent penetration of online video viewers, Tremor Media Video Network with 15.5 percent, and BBE with 13.6 percent.

- 84.4 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

- The average online video viewer watched 10.8 hours of video.

- 125.3 million viewers watched nearly 10.4 billion videos on YouTube.com (83.1 videos per viewer).

- 41.1 million viewers watched 313.5 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).

- The duration of the average online video was 3.9 minutes.

It is worth noting that Nielsen released some data last week, which put Facebook in third place among video sites, just behind YouTube and Hulu. According to them, Facebook had about 217.8 million streams in October. Make of that what you will.

Have You Read This?

> Facebook Catapults Into Third Place Among Video Sites

> Hulu Gets Feet Wet in the Music Video Pool

> YouTube And Hulu See Record High Video Views

MySpace Picks Up Imeem

Imeem, which was able to declare itself "the first and only social networking service to secure licenses from all four major music companies" about two years ago, now appears to be folding.  Reports indicate that MySpace is set to acquire the business for a rather piddling amount.

Imeem was once a fairly successful organization.  In addition to sealing the music company deals, it'd earned the backing of Sequoia Capital (which funded Apple, Yahoo, Google, and YouTube over the years), and was attracting around 25 million visitors per month.

Unfortunately for Imeem, though, Peter Kafka wrote last night, "[MySpace] is paying a fire sale price of $1 million, sources familiar with the situation tell me, and could pay up to $7 million to $9 million in earnouts for key employees, who will likely include CEO Dalton Caldwell."

Otherwise, no one's quite sure what will happen.  MySpace might keep Imeem open - the site's built something of a name for itself - or just use Imeem's assets to further its own music-related efforts.

We'll keep an eye out for additional information and/or an official announcement, then, and in the meantime, Imeem fans might want to at least think through their options.

Have You Read This?

> MySpace Launches New Music Charts

> Yahoo Challenges YouTube On Music Video Front

> Google Aims To Make Finding Music Easier

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