Music video streaming service Vevo could soon be the latest streaming company to move toward a subscription-based business model.
Vevo users may have the option of signing up for a paid version of the service before the end of 2016, the seven-year old company’s CEO, Erik Huggers, said at Re/code’s Code/Media conference on Wednesday. “Today our business is all about ad-supported,” Huggers told Re/code. “So we think that one of the important things—we hear this throughout the industry—is the move toward subscription. That’s something we’re interested in.”
Huggers didn’t offer any specific details on how much a paid version of Vevo would cost users, or if the service would continue to offer a free tier. By moving into selling subscriptions, Vevo would follow in the path of fellow video streaming service YouTube, which is also a destination for Internet users looking to stream music videos. The Google-owned (GOOG) site launched subscription service YouTube Red last year, offering ad-free videos, including some original content, for $9.99 per month.
Vevo—which partners with Google, Vivendi’s (VIV) Universal Music Group and Sony’s (SNE) U.S. music arm—boasts a collection of more than 150,000 music videos and concert performances. The service’s monthly viewership has surged in recent years, from 10 billion at this point last year to its current level of about 16 billion views.
