Hulu and EMI Team Up for Music Videos

Online video site Hulu is getting into the music biz, offering music video from EMI. First up: Norah Jones.

Online video site Hulu and music label EMI have announced a new partnership that will bring music and concert video from EMI artists to the popular service. The first offering under the deal will be a special channel dedicated to Norah Jones, who has a new album coming out this week.

“We think Hulu is an excellent, high-quality environment and a great place to connect with fans,” said EMI Music North America’s Ronn Werre, in a statement. “We look forward to making more content available from other artists as well.”

Hulu is a joint venture between NBC, Fox, and ABC that has been successfully offering online versions of current and catalog television shows, extras, and movies; EMI is the smallest of the “Big Four” music labels but in the last few years has generally been the label most eager to embrace digital distribution…it was also the first to drop DRM requirements from material sold through iTunes and other online music stores. Hulu’s deal with EMI marks its first partnership with a music label.

The Norah Jones channel on Hulu features several concert videos, an interview as well as produced music videos from both her forthcoming album and her three previous releases.

Hulu’s move into music video highlights a growing area of competition amongst online video providers. MySpace has long offered a brad catalog of music videos, and YouTube has been making deals with music labels to bring official music videos back to the service and even let labels recoup advertising money from videos and content uploaded to the service without authorization. YouTube also has a partnership with Universal Music Group and Sony to produce Vevo, a forthcoming premium music video hub that may also offer exclusive Web content.