VEVO is finally expanding to Australia after the company – a joint venture between the two biggest record labels – signed a new deal with an Australian company called MCM Entertainment. However, is it just too little, too late for Australians to embrace the service?

The site is to launch next week, according to the Australian Financial Review, and will have access to a large catalogue of videos from EMI, Sony Music and Universal (the latter two owners of the service).

However, the site has been up and running since 2009, and Australian users still technically could access the service via YouTube – since YouTube was hosting the content. Although some videos were blocked by region, most videos – including its ‘exclusive shows’ were accessible through that workaround. So, why VEVO is launching now?

It might be to capitalise the success of streaming music. JB Hi Fi NOW and Rdio are currently dominating the market – and VEVO’s main point of difference (until Spotify comes out, with a free version like it does in the US – hopefully) is that its free with advertising and you can watch/listen to music videos.

But then again, you can do the same thing on YouTube. And you pretty much have a much larger catalogue of music (often via copyright infringement).

VEVO would have done well in Australia if the company launched it sometime when there was a bit of buzz of such a service – since back then, it was rare for music labels to embrace YouTube as a platform for music. Now, you can get a recording contract simply by singing covers – despite the annoying (and often creepy) fangirls wailing their hands up like he’s Jesus Christ.

MCM Media – the guys who also run Take40 and The Hot Hits websites’ – will most likely find some synergies with VEVO for its music-related websites. However, for everyone else – we’ll simply ignore it and move on.