The idea behind ShufflerTV, which is set to officially launch Wednesday, is pretty simple: The site aggregates videos posted on music blogs and online music magazines like Pitchfork, XLR8R, Urb.com and the Fader, and compiles them to individual stations. The result are continuous streams of music videos that have been curated by people who actually know what they’re talking about.

Shuffler.fm combines this with a really neat player that allows users to skip songs, check out what’s coming next, change stations, subscribe to specific stations to easily access them and share individual videos on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

ShufflerTV integrates with Shuffler.fm’s audio site, which has been doing this kind of curated music programming sans video for some time. Users can for example subscribe to a station like Urb.com on ShufflerTV, and then listen to the songs posted there as part of their personal RadioMagazine, which is kind of like a megamix of all the songs of their favorite audio and video surces.

Shuffler isn’t the only one looking to offer a new take on music television online. Major label joint venture Vevo launched its own continuously playing music video station dubbed Vevo TV in March. However, Vevo is currently very much a take on the traditional MTV model, with a one-size-fits-all approach towards curation. ShufflerTV on the other hand comes with a much more targeted approach. Both has its merits. But if you ask me, Shuffler simply sounds better.

The company wants to eventually take Vevo TV to cable distributors to compete heads-on with MTV, according to an Adweek report, and it is also thinking about launching genre-specific live streams. Think Vevo Hip Hop, for example. But ultimately, going live is all about devices and the way they’re changing how we watch TV.

Vevo has put a lot of work into apps for mobile and connected devices, which it built in-house with the help of a small team of San Francisco-based developers. Mobile was a big success for the company early on, and the launch of the Xbox app a year ago “turned out to be wildly successful,” as Vevo’s product and tech SVP Michael Cerda put it when we talked about the subject a few months ago.

Vevo followed up with a Roku app in December, and Cerda told me that he wants to tackle additional connected TV platforms as soon as possible. “There is a huge opportunity for us there,” Cerda said.

Continuous playback combined with curation makes a whole lot of sense for something like music videos on connected TVs. Users don’t want to pick up their remote control to pick and choose every single video, but instead want something up and running in the background without interruption. And if a viewer is ever bored by what’s playing on Vevo TV’s live stream, then there’s always tons of on-demand content available right within the same app. It’s the best of both worlds.

So how do Vevo’s cable plans fit into this? Cable obviously has a much wider reach than a device like Roku, but the real lure are cable-sized ad-budgets. One could argue that Vevo might compete with itself if the same programming is available on cable set-top boxes and connected devices. But ultimately, those set-top-boxes are changing, and the distinctions between streaming and cable distribution are going to become less and less visible to consumers (to hear more about the future of TV, check out our paidContent conference in New York next month).

In that world, a live TV channel – distributed on as many platforms as possible – will guarantee that consumers will always access to Vevo, no matter whether they’re streaming or viewing plain old TV. And that’s a smart move.

Vevo is by far the biggest video publisher on YouTube. Recent comScore numbers show that Vevo clocked close to 565 million video views and more than 50 million unique viewers on the site in December alone. There are few other publishers on YouTube who come close to those view counts, and no one else engages so many people. Check out the chart below for details:

Vevo’s deal with YouTube was up. Vevo had been distributing its videos on YouTube ever since its launch at the end of 2009, but its deal with the Google-owned video site ended in December, and there had been persistent rumors that Facebook had shown interest in stealing Vevo away from YouTube. With a new deal, Google can deepen its ties with Vevo, ensuring that it will be able to show major label-owned videos for years to come.

Mobile and TV is getting bigger. This one is a bit of a long-shot, but worth considering nonetheless. More and more music videos are consumed on mobile and connected devices, be it phones, iPads or Xboxes. Vevo recognizes this, and has put lots of work into some pretty slick mobile and connected apps. The problem for YouTube is that it isn’t seeing any of the money from those mobile plays: Vevo is delivering and monetizing videos to mobile and connected devices on its own. It’s unclear whether this new deal would immediately change anything about this, but it’s possible that YouTube wants to get a foot in the door to eventually get a piece of this cake as well.

The agreement with the biggest music label, brokered by the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and announced Tuesday, enables indie songwriters and music publishers to collect royalties from Vevo for the first time.

Also read: Vevo viewers down 20% year-to-year

Founded in December 2009, Vevo has grown at an incendiary pace, establishing itself as dominant supplier of video programming for Google’s YouTube platform and taking in around  $150 million in revenue last year, mostly from ad sales.

That money had previously gone to the parent-company labels, who had in earlier contracts with artists defined music videos as merely promotional tools, not revenue-generating assets.

“This is a model example of how record labels along with songwriters and music publishers can move forward together to ensure that the licensing process is more effective and efficient, and that all creators are fairly compensated,” said David Israelite, president and CEO of the NMPA, in a statement.

Updated:

Participating NMPA publishers will give the rights necessary for the synchronization of their music to a video. In exchange, they’ll receive royalties from the video based on a percentage of Universal Music’s receipts.

Citing unnamed individuals close to the deal, Billboard reports that the agreement calls for publishers to receive 15 percent of ad revenues generated by their videos. The deal is also retroactive back to 2008.

Music video platform Vevo, which had been one of the fastest growing video properties on the Internet, is witnessing a steep viewership drop, at least on the web.

According to numbers released Monday by Internet usage tracker comScore, Vevo’s unique viewers in the U.S. during May dropped 20 percent from the same period last year, from 60.4 million to around 48.3 million.

Meanwhile, the average number of minutes each viewer spent watching Vevo videos in May declined 26 percent over the same period, from 105.1 to 77.7.

The online music platform, jointly launched in December 2009 by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media, had been on a meteoric rise, with unique viewers growing 44 percent from June 2010 to June 2011.

So what’s going on?

Also read: What a Facebook deal with Vevo could unleash

A Vevo spokesperson told paidContent Monday that the comScore metrics don’t offer a complete picture of a content business that has migrated to some degree from a core YouTube channel to mobile platforms, areas that not included in the research group’s measurement.

Vevo claims “active” users of its mobile apps have increased 46 percent year over year, with mobile streams up 434 percent over that period, reaching 450 million worldwide in May.

Added: Vevo additionally notes that a methodology change enacted by comScore in July 2011 renders our May 2011 – May 2012 comparison of minutes spent by user moot. In fact, minutes spent by user per month watching Vevo content have actually risen since the methodology change. 

Vevo also attributes some of the discrepancy to Google’s redesign of YouTube, which has moved away from feeds of most popular videos to a channel/subscriber model.

The comScore metrics also don’t reflect performance in other territories where Vevo operates, such as Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

Note: This story was updated to include Vevo’s response.

“This year we’re hoping to launch in at least another six countries,” Caraeff said. “Our big priority is to make the service more available in more countries.”

Vevo, which redesigned last week, is currently available in the U.S., Canada and UK. paidContent understands Australia is one of the new territories under consideration.

In January, reports had it that Vevo, which supplies officially-licensed music videos to YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), was in preliminary talks to switch that supply to Facebook, which lacks such a content play of its own.

Asked to confirm talks, Caraeff told me:

“We’re in a good position. Content is king. We’re seeing a lot of distribution partners take an interest in that content as a way to differentiate their services.

“We’ve had a lot of people reach out and say, ‘What more can we do together beyond just having the player on our platform?’ We’re talking with everyone about a more in-depth relationship; we’ve nothing to announce.”

in other words, Vevo is, of course, speaking with a lot of potential partners. Vevo recently began supplying some content to AOL (NYSE: AOL) and Yahoo.

The service is clocking up 3.5 billion views per month, Caraeff said – 30 percent of its streams come via YouTube (10 percent in the UK).

“Mobile and tablet is the fastest-growing part of our platform,” he said. “Xbox is exceeding our expectations.”

Many online content distributors, and many in the music segment, are currently on a globalisation drive, as they each try to achieve worldwide scale as global brands.

Caraeff said it’s important for Vevo to diversify revenue streams from just ad-supported music videos. Original programming o

Vevo did $150 million in revenue last year and has paid $100 million in royalties in the last two years, Caraeff also said during a session at The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit

“Advertising is a great model when you’re trying to reach billions of people – it’s not the only model.

“We’re very much focused on profitability but it’s not our number-one objective. We’re very much on track – it’s something we hope to achieve in the next year We’re definitely not a perpetual loss-making business.”

According to comScore’s latest monthly report on online video usage, Google – driven primarily by the performance of YouTube – drew 157.2 million unique viewers to its video offerings in December. That marked a 9 percent rise from December 2010 and represented 86 percent of the total internet audience for the month, according to comScore.

And with YouTube focusing on longer form, professionally produced video in its dedicated “TV” channels — not to mention other offerings like full-length movies — usage per unique viewer shot up 72 percent year-to-year to an average of 471.9 minutes per viewer.

The top 10 dedicated video channels all have homes on YouTube, with music channel VEVO ranking first, Warner Music second and game channel Machinima third. Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), which has also been aggressively building content channels, had a 6 percent year-to-year rise in unique video viewers to 53.3 million, while Hulu saw its unique viewers spike 18 percent to 31.2 million for December, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR).

Facebook saw only minimal growth, 2 percent to 42,024 unique viewers, over Dec. 2010.

Some other highlights from the *comScore* report:

– Hulu once again delivered the most video ad impressions with nearly 1.5 million ads rendered in December, up 22 percent from the same month in 2010.

– Across the entire internet, video ad deliveries increased 20 percent to 7.1 million.

– 181.7 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in December – up 6 percent over 2010 — for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer (up 59 percent). The U.S. Internet audience watched nearly 43.5 billion videos last month.

“Our fastest-growing platform is mobile; our streaming volume there is doubling every 30 days,” Rio Caraeff says. “Right now, over 50 million of our video views per month are from mobile.”

Owned by Universal, *Sony* Music Entertainment and Abu Dhabi Media Company, Vevo in December launched mobile and iPad apps with “music maps”, a feature with which users can see what videos are being played by folks nearby. It’s not clear whether anyone cares what strangers in the same city happen to be listening to, but Vevo will soon inject Facebook Connect in to the feature, so users can see friends’ viewing habits.

“Location is a great way to discover music,” says Caraeff. “Tying location, presence, geography in to music discovery is a big part of what we’ve enabled. I may want to say, what’s going on in New York, or in Germany. I may want to see what videos were filmed in this location, who’s playing in Texas tonight.”

It’s tempting to think of Vevo as the online generation’s MTV, now that MTV itself has moved from music videos toward original shows. As we reported recently, music listeners play online music videos more than they buy song downloads.

But the music video format whose parameters were set by the characteristics of TV need not be the same nowadays. Caraeff talks with admiration of Arcade Fire’s HTML5 experiment and a “choose-your-own-adventure” music vid shown recently by Vevo.

“Why should a music video be like it was in 1983?,” he asks paidContent. “Why should a song be three and a half minutes, a flat file that’s not aware that it’s on the internet in the first place?

“Maybe it should know my likes and dislikes, maybe it should know whether it’s raining in Seattle or whether the stock market’s up or down. Maybe it should know whether it’s day time or night time out. Maybe it should be a different experience three months later, if the fan or artist wants to impact the creative process.”

“Just because they were on television 20 years ago, that doesn’t mean music videos can’t be innovative online today. Just putting music videos online is not particularly innovative – but that’s where you start, not where you end.

“The global appetite for music is bigger than ever. That’s good for fans and artists – there’s transformation going on, but music videos form a baseline catalogue, a place to build upon. We’re creating new experiences and live events to build on top of that. There’s a lot of creativity, there’s no rules as to what the future will be – just different people being stimulated by what’s possible.”

Vevo is both its own destination and a distributor of videos, for which it is the licensing partner, to destinations lik YouTube, Facebook, AOL (NYSE: AOL) and CBS (NYSE: CBS), with which it shares ad income from pre-rolls and display ads. With about 60 million monthly users on comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) count, the majority (70 percent) happens on YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG). Of the remaining 30 percent, Vevo.com is the most popular destination.

The syndication strategy is in order to amass a broad audience for advertisers. “You can’t be at a small scale and be meaningful to major brands, or major artists either,” Caraeff says. “So scale is what we’ve tried to build with this platform – but in a way that’s compatible with the physics of the web. Instead of telling people they have to come to your site – that’s an old paradigm – I believe in putting Vevo everywhere the fan is. You can drink from whatever tap you want to, but the water’s going to come from our well.”

Vevo launched fully in the UK on Tuesday, despite having been available through some syndication partners for some time. It counts 12 to 15 brands as advertising partners – including O2, BT (NYSE: BT), Puma and L’Oreal – and now plans further international launches later this year. Priorities are the major European markets, Brazil and Australia.

“It’s not something I can really talk about,” Caraeff said, when asked if there was an opportunity regarding the ailing social network. “I’ve seen that reported. Our strategy is to focus on growing organically, building a global brand. We’re not in conversations to make that (MySpace deal) happen – it’s not something that there’s any substance to.”

News Corp is seeking a whole or partial sale of MySpace after failing to turn it around. A Vevo-MySpace deal would have united the music industry’s self-anointed online video distributor with the social site on which the industry and bands alike used to rely for artist marketing and A&R. Caraeff’s denial could suggest that reported talks happened but came to nothing.

Caraeff was speaking in London on Tuesday, when Vevo, 18 months after launch, finally became fully accessible in the UK, where it is growing a team of 10 to 25 people under former Channel 5 digital MD Jonathan Lewis.

Owned by Universal, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music Entertainment and Abu Dhabi Media Company, Vevo also plays EMI acts’ videos under license but still has no repertoire from Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG), which Caraeff describes as “the lone holdout”, under such an arrangement. Yet Caraeff senses an opportunity. “Anything’s possible,” he said. “Basically, the company (Warner) is up for sale. We don’t know what’ll happen with its new owners – we think that’s a fresh start and a new conversation.

“They’ve had their own historical direction they want to go in and it hasn’t affected our revenue or growth or trajectory. It’s not optimal for the consumer, but, we have mutual respect for each other’s strategies. They have a different perspective.” Vevo tries to compensate for Warner acts’ absence by pointing its users to videos on other sites.

It’s not just WMG for sale – the calamity around one of the other majors, EMI, could, in theory, result in a similar opportunity. Vevo’s equity make-up may be open to change…

“For the right strategic partner, we’re always interested in having that conversation,” Caraeff said. “If EMI or Warner Music wanted to have that conversation, of course we would be willing to have it. But we’re not actively in the marketplace shopping equity. We’re not looking to raise money, we’re not actively soliciting new joint venture partners. I have enough board members as it is!”

Former ITV (LSE: ITV) online director Ben McOwen Wilson will take the former role (replacing Donagh O’Malley, who is now with Google TV), while ProSiebenSat.1′s Alexander Goethel takes up the latter, C21 reported first and YouTube confirmed to paidContent:UK. Patrick Walker, GooTube’s EMEA partnerships head, remains in place.

YouTube carries UK catch-up TV from Channel 4 and Channel 5 plus a low-grade selection of on-demand movies – surely just a stake in the ground for larger ambitions.

Last month, YouTube purchased Next New Networks, which produces a number of web shows.

YouTube tells paidContent:UK it’s “ramping up our hiring”: “We have stated that we will be hiring a number of people in line with the growth of YouTube.”

Separately, Vevo is adding Channel 5 digital head Jonathan Lewis as its UK managing director for its imminent launch there, MediaWeek reports.