MUZU was an independent online music video site with the largest legal catalogue of online music videos. The video catalogue was licensed by all major record labels

Universal Music Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...

Warner Music Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and th ...

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainme ...

, independent music labels and niche music content owners. Content includes concerts, music videos, lyric videos, interviews, music documentaries and lots more. MUZU also powered music video solutions on hundreds of sites and platforms including Microsoft

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

, LG and

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

Smart TV's along some of the largest sites in the world including:

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', '' Mail Online'', ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'', Bild.de, ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'', ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'',

Metacafe Metacafe was an Israeli video-sharing website, launched in July 2003. During the mid-2000s, it was one of the largest video-sharing websites, though eventually began to be superseded by YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion. In August 2021, the platform' ...

and many more. MUZU.TV was founded in Ireland by Ciarán Bollard and Mark French and operated in over 19 countries with offices in Dublin, London and Germany. MUZU generated revenue through premium advertising solutions; Artists, labels, broadcasters and all music content owners got a revenue share of the advertising revenue generated from plays of their videos on and off the site. The company called a creditors meeting on 22 October 2015 and revealed that it is heading into liquidation and that Michael Leydon has been appointed liquidator.

Company history

Before the launch Sony BMG signed an agreement with MUZU to allow more than 6,000 videos by artists, including

The Ting Tings The Ting Tings are an English indie pop duo from Salford, Greater Manchester formed in 2007. The band consists of Katie White (vocals, guitar, bass drums, bass guitar, cowbells) and Jules De Martino (drums, lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboards ...

and Kylie Minogue, to appear on the site, with a further 2,000 hours of footage from entities such as Cherry Red,

Eagle Rock Entertainment Eagle Rock Entertainment is an international producer and distributor of music films and programming. It operates two record labels (Eagle Records and Armoury Records), a full-service production company (Eagle Rock Productions) and a music publis ...

, Hollywood Music, Ministry of Sound, Ninja Tune and ''

Planet Rock Profiles ''Planet Rock Profiles'' is an Irish-produced and long-running television show consisting of a biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, ...

''.

Converse Converse may refer to: Mathematics and logic * Converse (logic), the result of reversing the two parts of a definite or implicational statement ** Converse implication, the converse of a material implication ** Converse nonimplication, a logical c ...

Heineken International Heineken N.V. () is a Dutch multinational brewing company, founded in 1864 by Gerard Adriaan Heineken in Amsterdam. , Heineken owns over 165 breweries in more than 70 countries. It produces 348 international, regional, local and speciality be ...

, O2,

Pioneer Corporation commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair ...

, Ray-Ban and

were among the earliest companies to advertise on the website. On 20 August 2008, it was announced that a deal had been signed with ITN, which gave MUZU access to archive footage of TV shows such as '' The Tube'' and '' Calendar Goes Pop''.

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

signed a deal on 16 January 2009 which permitted the website to feature more than 5,000 videos. On 19 January 2009, it was announced that

Beggars Group Beggars Group is a British record company that owns or distributes several other labels, including 4AD, Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and Young. History The companies’ roots stem from the Beggars Banquet record shops, whi ...

had signed. On 27 January 2009, Cooking Vinyl announced it had signed a global deal, with its founder commenting that MUZU TV was "purpose-built for the music industry and we believe it holds great revenue potential". On 21 July 2009, it was announced that Merlin Network, which had previously refused both MySpace and YouTube, had signed. Announced on 25 January 2010 were deals with

AOL Music AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

Bebo Bebo ( ) was an American social networking website that originally operated from 2005 until its bankruptcy in 2013 and relaunched in February 2021. The site relaunched several times after its bankruptcy with a number of short-lived offerings, ...

and the

Telegraph Media Group Telegraph Media Group Limited (TMG; previously the Telegraph Group) is the proprietor of ''The Daily Telegraph'' and ''The Sunday Telegraph''. It is a subsidiary of Press Holdings. David and Frederick Barclay acquired the group on 30 July 2004, ...

. In January 2010, Muzu.tv agreed to give them access to its video library in exchange for a share of advertising revenue. At the Muzu also provided a legal music service, and had otherwise signed deals with Irish Independent, Communicorp, Spinner UK, Drowned In Sound, Habbo Hotel, Virtual Festivals, Mama Group, Meanfiddler, and the Fly Magazine. The

Samsung Group The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ' ...

said in January 2010 it would allow the development of a MUZU app for its televisions. In February 2010, Muzu's new jukebox music video feature faced competition from an almost identical feature released by

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. In 2011, it was made available on

. In November 2011, Sony started offering Muzu videos through its Sony Entertainment Network on several home entertainment devices. The MUZU.TV app became available on Xbox 360s in December 2011. In 2013, the catalogue of music videos, concerts, interviews, and music documentaries stood at 130,000. It claimed at the time to have the "largest legal catalogue of music videos available on the web licensed by major record labels and the independent sector." That year it partnered with

for " scrobbling." Muzu was making a profit in late 2013, with backing by Bill McCabe. Ciaran Bollard was CEO of Muzu. In 2014, Muzu.tv and ''

'' were recordings bands such as

Klaxons Klaxons were an English rock band, based in London. Following the release of several 7-inch singles on different independent record labels, as well as the success of previous singles " Magick" and "Golden Skans", the band released their debut ...

for a live series. In October 2015, MUZU announced it was shutting down. After struggling to pay rightsholders for some time, MUZU, which was free, ad-supported and available in 23 countries, will go into liquidation.

Awards

The Irish Internet Association named Bollard and French as the 2009 Net Visionaries. IIA Chair Maeve Kneafsey announced the winner at a ceremony on 21 May 2009 by describing the website as "an inspiration to the current and future generations of internet entrepreneurs who know that the internet means that there are no boundaries on what we can do in Ireland, the only limit being our imagination". Bollard and French spoke at the Dublin Web Summit on internet business in

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

on 4 February 2010.

References

External links

MUZU TV
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muzu tv Companies based in Dublin (city) Online music stores of Ireland Internet properties established in 2008 Defunct video on demand services