Will DreamWorks Purchase A Piece Of VEVO?

DreamWorks Animation already has a big influence among YouTube’s multi-channel networks, and it’s looking to pick up another asset. According to a report in Recode, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s film studio wants to purchase a stake in VEVO, the largest music network on YouTube.

DreamWorks has reportedly submitted a bid to VEVO’s ownership, a group primarily composed of record label giants such as Universal and Sony. The size of the bid is not known, though it does not seem as if Dreamworks will purchase the network outright.

If it does invest in VEVO, DreamWorks will join Google, which invested in the music network last year. Google reportedly paid between $40-50 million for a seven to ten percent share of the company, a ratio that would value the entire company around $500 million–the minimum amount Disney plans to pay to acquire multi-channel network Maker Studios.

Last year, DreamWorks purchased the AwesomenessTV MCN for at least $33 million. By extension, it now also owns Big Frame, the MCN that AwesomenessTV just purchased for $15 million. The film studio’s range extends outside of networks, too–it teamed up with YouTube to help launch daily recap channel YouTube Nation earlier this year. Three months after its debut, YouTube Nation already has more than one million subscribers.

If it does secure a stake in VEVO, DreamWorks will control a piece of the network that consistently ranks #1 in Comscore’s US online video MCN rankings. While the Recode report questions VEVO’s profit margins, music videos themselves are a huge part of the YouTube ecosystem–and with YouTube’s streaming music service set to arrive this summer, they’re only going to get bigger.