We have known that VidZone was rolling out to 11 more countries since August and now we finally have the dates. Over on the EU Blog VidZone’s Head of Production, Ben Creasey, has listed the three dates that bring to service to the new countries.
- 26th November: Netherlands, Portugal, Austria
- 3rd December: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland
- 10th December: Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, New Zealand
Ben cautions new users that the first time they start VidZone it may take as long as fifteen minutes to update the videos and playlists. Compare that to the couple of minutes it took when the service first launched and you get some idea of how much more content there now is.
He also took the time to hang around the comments for several hours. Here are the more interesting things that came up in his responses:
- It only took until the 7th comment for the complaining to start from those whose country does not yet have VidZone and is not in the 11 countries about to be added. A Polish whinger suggesting the team had no intention of bringing VidZone to his country received the reply, “Nothing is impossible, we have lots of plans for the next few months.”
- Later in the comments a shout-y Greek under the impression that everyone except the Greeks have VidZone, “SCREW YOU IM FROM GREECE ALL THE COUNTRIES HAVE VIDZONE EXCEPT FROM GREECE… IS IT SOOOOOOOO DIFICULT TO LET GREECE HAVE THIS?”, actually got a polite and humorous reply from Ben, “Sorry that we haven’t got to Greece yet. It is more dificult than you think to get a new country live (the whole team has been working all hours to get this one ready) We would love for the whole world to have VidZone, but we have to do it step by step. We will never tell you something unless we are sure it will happen (that’s why we left it so late to announce this update) but we are working on world domination!”
- Presumably the primary difficulty in bringing VidZone to more countries is the music licensing. The question, “I’m Portuguese, but live in the Netherlands. Will I be able to see Portuguese artists from Portugal’s service?”, elicited an answer that sheds a little more light on the complexities of the licensing. “It all depends what licenses we have for a certain artist in a certain country. You will see only videos with a license for Holland in Holland but usually the licenses we have cover the majority of the VidZone services whether the atrist is from another country or not. If there is anything missing let us know and we will try and get it for you.”
- How do you let them know? The answer to a Belgian commenter concerned that VidZone might see Belgium’s music scene as composed entirely of “second-hand Euro-disco acts” told us how. “We do try our best to get the best local artists. If the artist you want isn’t available, email [email protected] with your suggestions (and the record labels if you can) and we will do our best to license.”