VIRAL VIDEO CONTENT ONSCREEN – NIGHTLIFE MUSIC PARTNERS WITH JUKIN MEDIA
It might seem like a somewhat minor media partnership story on the face of it, but it speaks to the rapidly changing nature of content – especially in Australia.
Australian on-screen entertainment business Nightlife Music has sealed a content partnership with Los Angeles-based content juggernaut Jukin Media, the company best known for snapping up the rights on viral videos and aggressively monetising them.
Nightlife Music, which supplies video screens and content to venues like pubs, clubs, restaurants and gyms, is best known for their CrowdDJ system, which provides a mobile interface for punters to queue up their own music on the sound system at participating venues.
The deal allows NightlifeMusic to display Jukin content on their roughly 10,000 screens – meaning they’ll have access to output from subsidiary brands like People Are Awesome, FailArmy and The Pet Collective. You can certainly see the visceral appeal in sinking a few schooners and watching a fail video compilation on the big telly at the pub.
Nightlife’s head of content Matt Lymbury said in a statement to Business Insider Australia that viral videos will be a welcome addition to the company’s existing library.
“Nightlife has one of the most compelling music video catalogues in the world, but with the immense popularity of viral videos globally we are constantly looking for highly engaging content, which is valued by our clients,” Mr Lymbury said.
“Access to Jukin’s remarkable short-form content and its expertise in aggregating the world’s best amateur videos is a superb arrangement and further fuels Nightlife’s expansion into screen management.”
And Lymbury agrees on the fail compilation part.
“We anticipate the FailArmy channel will be enormously popular in pubs, with hilarious clips of stacks and falls very similar to the funniest home video shows of the past,” he said.
A spokesperson for Nightlife Music confirmed to Business Insider Australia that it will have access to all new Jukin content as it becomes available. At present, according to Jukin Media’s website, this tallies up to over 50,000 videos.
Not all coverage of Jukin Media has been positive. The company’s aggressive approach to securing rights on emerging viral videos and hunting down infringements of those rights has earned it the ire of much of the digital publishing world at one point or another. A 2018 feature by Mashable described Jukin as like “an internet mob boss” controlling an expanding turf – and making the internet less fun in the process.
But on the other side of the coin – and as the brand itself tells it – licensing companies like Jukin are a rare opportunity for content creators to profit from their creations. If publishers are monetising their videos by sharing and writing about them, the thinking goes, they may as well get their cut through Jukin.
The announcement follows an earlier win for Nightlife Music, who signed off on a deal with the AFL, giving the company access to a library of “best-of” videos of the sport which can be distributed across the screen network.
At the very least, we’ll all have something a little different to watch at the pub than music videos and the simulated 3D horse races at the TAB.
By James Hennessy
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jukin-media-australian-partnership-2019-9
