Last spring saw the debut of an online venue called YouLicense,
which provided a place for independent music creators to license their
tracks and clips to those who, well, wish to license music.
Whether it
be for a marketing or commercial purpose, or any other purpose,
YouLicense was the place to go. Since its inception in June, it seems
to have grown quite a bit, and its creators are now launching a new
project called VIRV.
24 Hour Live Streaming
It’s roughly described by its makers as an indie
music television channel. A joint venture between YouLicense and We Are Listening,
an organizer of “songwriting contests,” VIRV was
launched last weekend
as a live-streaming, 24-hour-a-day outlet for solely independent music
video creations.
In the press release, VIRV’s
promoters
describe the non-stop concoction of moving pictures as one eclectic in
supply, with a clips of artists and groups ranging from stalwarts of
the indie scene, like Bright
Eyes, to acts like “Fujiya &
Miyagi, Architecture
in Helsinki, Of
Montreal, Dappled
Cities, Aesop
Rock, Cursive,
Budos Band,
and more.”
Music Video After Music Video
An IPTV venture, VIRV is attractive in the way that it serves
one
purpose only: display music video after music video. Remember when MTV
would do that very thing? Yeah, it’s kind of like that,
except instead
of watching Simon and Garfunkel work their harmonies, you get to see
Fujiya & Miyagi, and in purported DVD-quality video, to boot.
How, you ask, do they deliver such high-quality video over
one’s
broadband connection? Well, rather than push those bits through, say, a
Flash player embedded within one’s browser, they ask that
wannabe
viewers download a proprietary player – in the form of a plug-in –
through which one is able to access the channel for free.
Windows only, for now. However, according to the copy on the
press
release, “a Mac-compatible version of the VIRV player will be
released
shortly.”
Go ahead, try it
out. Let us know if you like it. Or don’t like it.
Whatever.
Paul Glazowski is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
