Vevo’s Watch Party allows viewers to consume videos with friends

Music video hosting service Vevo is launching a new multi-screen social feature called Watch Party this month.

Viewers can chat, create video playlists and watch Vevo’s 230,000 music videos in synch with an unlimited amount of friends from other cities and countries – as long as they’re all on the Vevo platform.

They can jointly search for and include up to 100 videos a time to a group playlist, and have fun critiquing the musical tastes of their friends.

However, YouTube may be apprehensive if Vevo starts drawing viewers away with an offering of exclusive content, which involves a long term of engagement.

First, YouTube does not have a co-viewing feature. Secondly, in the US, Vevo-owned music channels power 43% of total views on YouTube.

Watch Party will first arrive on desktop - Vevo.com - but plans are in the works for mobile integration.

Vevo, set up in 2009 by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment (they each have a 40% stake, holding a licensing agreement with the third major, Warner Music Group) has 21 billion global views a month, according to comScore data last October.

It claims 400 million monthly viewers, 60% of which are viewed on mobile devices.

After announcing Watch party at this year’s South By Southwest in Austin, Vevo also unveiled an update of its app which will feature a new set of algorithms to find and play curated playlists.

From today, users are offered 30 seconds (or 25% of a song) based on past viewing. Also offered is a video log of newly available content.

The move has the thumbs-up from analysts, who say that it’s an effective way to draw new users who are not heavy-duty music fans with recommendation and discovery.

For Vevo, two new features, both set up to attract more viewers, come at a time when the service is planning to increase its international expansion.

There are also rumours that Vevo could enter into a partnership with Facebook, which is also travelling a similar path to getting more engagement from its 1.23 billion active monthly users by offering them video play.