Vevo, UMG’s musiv video site powered by Youtube, gets a CEO.
There are plenty of question marks surrounding Vevo, Universal Music Group’s new music video site that’s scheduled to launch later this year with a big assist from Google’s YouTube. But here’s one answer: The venture will be run by Rio Caraeff, who currently oversees UMG’s digital business.
Caraeff is already heading up Vevo on an interim basis, but right now he’s still holding down his old job as executive vice president of UMG’s eLabs unit. At some point later this year, he is “99.99 percent certain” to be named president of the video site, according to someone familiar with Universal’s thinking. No word on who will get his old job.
That’s a good start for Vevo, which you can think of as either a “Hulu for music,” or more practically, “YouTube Music,” since the project will move videos at the world’s biggest music company from the world’s biggest video site and onto the new venture.
Running a start-up will be a new role for Caraeff, but at least he knows digital music and UMG specifically–he’s been working there since 2005. Prior to that, he ran wireless for Sony’s (SNE) movie arm.
Just as important, the appointment means Vevo will at least have cleared one hurdle that tripped up News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, which announced its plans to start a music site in the April 2008 but couldn’t land a CEO for the venture until MTV vet Courtney Holt took the gig in November–a couple months after the site launched.
There’s plenty for Caraeff to do: In addition to overseeing the launch of the site itself, he’ll need to staff it–while Google (GOOG) is helping Universal build and power the site, Caraeff will need to hire a “couple dozen people,” says a source familiar with his plan. A big priority: Assembling a sales force to sell the video clips.