This week on This Week In Music I interview MTV’s EVP of Digital Media, Dermot McCormack, visiting LA from NYC. MTV has made an incredible rise in monthly unique visitors as measured by Comscore in the past few years, growing from approximately 20M when Dermot arrived three years ago to more than 60M today making them the #1 most visited music property as measured by Comscore (#2 is Vevo, note “YouTube” as a whole is not in the “music” category according to Comscore despite its popularity as a place for music listening/watching) [CORRECTION (via VEVO): June Comscore counted 59.7M visitors to MTV last month while VEVO had 66.4M. After those two leaders next is line is AOL at 25.9M, ToneFuse at 24.1M (um, who?), and Yahoo! Music at 21.7M.] Dermot and his team have made this leap by aggregating a number of traffic sources, from MTV.com to new properties like MTV Hive and Next Movie to big deals such as their deal to be Warner Music Group’s ad sales team.

A few highlights from this week’s show:


8:35: “We are seen as the head of the class when it comes to big media companies understanding new platforms. With over 81M Facebook fans we are the biggest media brand on Facebook, the second one is not even close. We decided the social media revolution was important, a new way to communicate with an audience. There’s an expectation with this generation to talk back. The media companies that are listening will do well.”

12:00: “When I took over at MTV I thought there was an opportunity for Music. To be a strong, robust advertising business in new platforms you need scale. How do we build scale? How do we get to 100M unique users in new platforms? Even if you have a wonderful hit like Jersey Shore, it still won’t take you to 100M users. So we need a different strategy. So how can we get to 100M? The answer was sitting right there in front of us. What do we have a lot of assets in? Music! We looked around at the landscape and the next MTV of new platforms hadn’t emerged yet. Many made a run at it, MySpace, AOL, MTV, etc. Here we are in 2009-2010 and no big player has emerged that is the center of the content universe. There is a place for a global brand that has a strong association with music and lots of assets, from talent relations to 500M television screens worldwide to iconic brands. We decided music was going to be the tip of a content strategy that would take us to that large footprint, and that’s what we’ve been pursuing.”

22:18: “Our company is built on content and content franchises. We’re not a technology company. We make Jackass, Jersey Shore, Spongebob, and The Daily Show. That’s our product. Content is changing. The pillars of what make up the music business are changing. Consumer behavior is changing, distribution is changing, and content creation is changing. We’re creating content right now for five percent of what it would have cost to create just six or seven years ago. That has meaningful impact. MTV Hive is on one level a music blog, but also it’s a lab for creating new content like 120 Seconds with Matt Pinfield. Should we build a technology company or should we be playing in how new content is created. I think we should be doing the latter.”

28:56: “I don’t think we’re in the business of building Twitter or Facebook the same way we’re not in the business of building telecommunications networks. We have a saying at MTV: ‘Facebook is the telephone, we’re the conversation’. Not many people talk about Facebook on Facebook. They talk about Paramore’s new video or Kanye West jumping on stage at the VMAs or breaking up with their girlfriend. Over time social networking companies may look like cable companies, infrastructure pipe providers that enable entertainment, information, or communication to happen. We view ourselves as a story telling company with content at the center.”

36:25: “If I had to call the next phase anything, I’d call it the era of massive communal consumption of media. Never in the history of human consumption of media have you been able to consume connected to conversation from all over the world.”

38:39: “We hope we become the place where you get the story behind the music. I know that’s using one of our brands but what’s the next version of Unplugged, Pop Up Video or Behind The Music? Who’s telling the story? Where’s the narrative? Where’s the context? If we do our jobs MTV is one trusted source in a world where everyone has a megaphone and people want to know who to trust and believe. We’re an authority, we provide context, and we curate.”

Also, Aquarium Drunkard’s Justin Gage dropped by to talk about one of his favorite albums of summer 2011, White Denim’s D. Check out the video for Streety Joy from White Denim’s D below, and buy on Amazon right here.

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White Denim – Street Joy from dms.FM on Vimeo.