Vevo has parted ways with Erik Huggers, its President and CEO since 2015.
Effective immediately, Alan Price has been named interim CEO, adding to his current role as Chief Financial Officer.
Although Huggers (pictured) is believed to have overseen a jump in Vevo’s revenue, up to around $500m a year, his team scrapped plans to launch a subscription service towards the end of last year.
Vevo also remains heavily reliant on its relationship with YouTube, despite a recent re-launch of Vevo’s own proprietary platform.
Vevo is understood to be re-negotiating its exclusive contract with YouTube, which is due to expire in the first half of next year.
Currently, in addition to the 50% of revenue Vevo pays out to rights-holders, 30% of any cash generated by plays on its YouTube channels goes straight to the Google platform.
Overall, around 90% of Vevo’s revenue is therefore paid out to its partners and owners. That’s even a tighter margin than Spotify.
At the close of 2016, Universal Music Group owned 49.4% voting rights in Vevo.
Other shareholders include Sony Music, Abu Dhabi Media and Alphabet/Google.
“We would like to thank Erik for his hard work, dedication and leadership at Vevo, which grew dramatically during his tenure and helped forge stronger connections between artists and fans through popular features and original programming.”
Vevo statement
Erik Huggers joined Vevo in April 2015, five months after the exit of the platform’s founder and former CEO, Rio Caraeff.
Huggers’ previous roles included an SVP position at Verizon Communications Inc.
Prior to this, he developed OnCue at Intel, where he was President of the company’s media division from 2011 to 2014.
He was also an executive board member responsible for the BBC’s Future Media & Technology division, where he launched BBC iPlayer.
Vevo’s board of directors said, “We would like to thank Erik for his hard work, dedication and leadership at Vevo, which grew dramatically during his tenure and helped forge stronger connections between artists and fans through popular features and original programming.”
Vevo, founded in 2009, averages 25 million unique viewers a day and attracts 25 billion viewers monthly users.
Vevo provides more than 330,000 videos to viewers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Music Business Worldwide
