We’re in Cannes this week at the Midem music conference. We just announced some deals with major publishers which is starting to get a lot of notice across the media world with coverage on Bloomberg, Business Week etc. Her’e the press release:

MUZU.TV POWERS MUSIC VIDEO FOR MAJOR PUBLISHERS, AND SIGNS GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP WITH INSKIN MEDIA FOR PREMIUM AD FORMATS

Cannes/Dublin/London — January 25, 2010 – Award-winning music video site MUZU.TV today announced that it has struck video syndication deals with a number of major publishers including: AOL Music; The Irish Independent; Communicorp; Spinner UK; Drowned In Sound; Telegraph Media Group; Bebo; Habbo Hotel; Virtual Festivals; Mama Group: Meanfiddler, The Fly Magazine..
The publishers will have access to MUZU.TV’s extensive music video library and video player to power music video on their sites, including editorial. The partnership will also include an advertising revenue share agreement through premium advertising formats. These deals are significant to MUZU.TV’s music industry partners, including the major and independent record labels, as they will drive revenue and promotional reach for their music video libraries. MUZU.TV traffic is growing at 20-30% month on month and is currently serving over 14m music related videos per month in the U.K.
MUZU.TV also announced a global, preferred partnership music agreement with InSkin Media, who develop and deliver premium interactive online video ad formats, including InSkin™(video wrap around’), i-Roll™(interactive pre-roll) and PageSkin™. The deal enables any website that wants to use these premium InSkin advertising formats around music video to use the MUZU.TV player.
Market demand for this format has been exceptionally high, thanks to the consumer-friendly formats and extraordinarily high click-through-rates (CTRs), averaging over 3%, and going as high as 12% on MUZU.TV and publisher partners sites. These formats are currently generating market-leading CPMs of €25, which is then shared with MUZU.TV’s music industry partners.
MUZU.TV has run recent InSkin campaigns both on MUZU.TV and publisher partner sites for major consumer brands, including: BT, Smirnoff; Specsavers, Windows 7, Samsung; Sony Ericsson, Peugeot and a variety of movie and gaming brands.
“Commenting on the deals, MUZU.TV Founder and CEO Ciaran Bollard said: “We are focused on bringing to market premium and innovative advertising formats such as InSkin. This partnership coupled with our extensive reach through MUZU.TV and major publishers like AOL, Communicorp, The Irish Independent, The Telegraph and Samsung Internet TVs provides a compelling proposition for all our partners; brands, artists and labels alike.”

Hugo Drayton, CEO of InSkin Media, added: “InSkin Media is delighted to further cement our close relationship with Muzu.TV. We have collaborated closely throughout 2009, developing the most effective and appropriate formats for advertisers, publishers and consumers. Our partnership with Muzu.TV has been key to our growth this year and will be even more important as we grow our UK, US and European business in 2010.

Noel Penzer, Director, Business Development, Warner Music Europe, said: “Consistent with our premium video strategy, Warner Music UK continues to expand its distribution footprint, providing its roster of artists with a flexible and reliable means of marketing and monetizing their music, across a wide range of online destinations. These latest innovative moves from MUZU.TV will generate new opportunities both for advertisers and syndication partners, whilst creating additional content-rich connections between artist and fan.”

MUZU.TV has built one of the largest legal music video offerings on the web, where music lovers can watch and discover tens of thousand of music videos for free, covering everything from live concerts and documentaries to official music videos and rare, archive footage. The company also syndicates its video library to major publishers as well as venue and festival entities including Theo2.co.uk, HMV Hammersmith Apollo, HMV Forum, Creamfields, Global Gathering, UK Festival Awards and many others.

ENDS