Wednesday, it was reported on MashableMashable
that HuluHulu
– the web service that popularized television on the internet – was Flirting with Music Video
Norah Jones it seems, can now be found – among Saturday Night Live, Glee, Dollhouse, and Desperate Housewives – on Hulu.
As an avid supporter of Hulu, I was happy and excited to see such a great service expanding like this. Though I wasn’t exactly a big fan of Norah Jones – I wasn’t exactly sure who she was – I eagerly clicked play on the video embedded underneath Mashable’s story.
I found myself immediately disgruntled at being presented with – instead of the music video I was expecting, – a thirty-second advert. Blinking in surprise I realized that I should have expected this. Hulu was all about Ads. After years of illegal and ad-free content on the web, Hulu was the one that started bringing the content to the web legitimately, paying for it all with ads.
Yet there was something unsettling about having my, two-minute long video prefaced by something I didn’t want to watch as long as a fourth of what I DID want to watch. The simple act of including a commercial was completely altering the experience of a Music Video.
After watching a few videos I found that the experience wasn’t always exactly the same. Sometimes the ads were 30 seconds, at other times 11 seconds, and even sometimes 4 seconds. The shorter times – the 4 seconds especially – were much more bearable. Still, I think the consumer of music video is much more used to the instant gratification of the play button.
What do you think? Will Hulu be successful with Music Video? Do you think the ads will prove to be a problem?
Written and Published by JyoNah (Jonah Price)
