Miley Cyrus broke records last week when the video of her latest single, “Wrecking Ball,” featuring her naked and straddling a wrecking ball, hit close to 20 million views in 24 hours on video streaming site Vevo.
But it’s likely no one is more excited than the executives of Vevo, the private company that has been taking a wrecking ball of its own to the competition.
Launched in 2009 as a partnership between the record labels Universal Music and Sony Music Entertainment, Vevo topped 600 million views in August, according to comScore. That’s nearly three times more than music video pioneer MTV.
Vevo began mainly as a YouTube channel. But the popularity of its own site prompted Google to pony up $47 million in July for a 7% stake in the company.
Vevo’s success has been a rare spot of good news for a recording industry struggling for new ways to sell music in the face of online piracy. It has already attracted a roster of blue-chip advertisers, including AT&T, Ford and, in an ironic twist, MTV.
This story originally appeared in Maclean’s.
