![Walking through the tunnel created by the cheerleaders and Celebrities, senior Frances Tran smiles as the soccer team is sent off during DEN for their playoff game against Rouse tonight. Tran said the wins against Smithson Valley and Alamo Heights gave the team a morale boost to take on the Raiders tonight. “I know we were not 100% confident in those games,” Tran said. “But, Rouse is a big opponent for sure. We’re definitely going into tonight with a lot of morale [because of the previous wins].”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/frances-tran.jpg)
![Holding a bucket of materials in one hand and a roll of tape in another, anatomy and biology teacher Tyler Terry prepares for a lab. Terry said his proudest moments are when his students are happy to see him. “When I take my wife to a football game or something and a bunch of students want to say hi to me or they like to smile and wave and it just makes me feel good that the students are really kind and supportive of me,” Terry said. “[I’m also] proud when I see students perform really well in their extracurriculars because I can see how hard they’re working in my classes, [so] when I see that they’re also working so hard in other things. Like they’re winning band competitions or they’re getting awards for their theater productions, or I see them put on their choir shows, that’s like, wow, you guys are incredible.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Rags-6.png)
![Catching a ball, junior Alivia Robinson plays at the Cedar Park vs Glenn game. Having played since she was 5 years old, she is dedicated to softball and has committed to UTPB for softball. “When I got my offer it took me a very long time to decide where,” Robinson said. “Softball has always been my dream for college, and UTPB is my fit. When [I committed] I knew I was going to be loved and supported.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Lilly-Adams-3.13aliviaedit-901.jpg)
![Holding her dog, Nova, senior Ariana Balakrishnan poses for her senior pictures while Nova wears a bandana with her college decision. Balakrishnan applied to 18 colleges in total, but she decided on Columbia in the end. “Right before I clicked the button to open Columbia’s letter, I literally looked at the camera and go ‘This is just gonna really suck because I wanted it so bad,’ and I clicked it and all of a sudden you hear trumpets,” Balakrishnan said. “There’s a video that plays when you open it and I actually didn’t watch the video, I just watched the screen go black, because every day of December before ED [Early Decision] I would go on YouTube and watch the acceptance video to manifest it, so immediately when the screen went black, I started screaming and jumping up and down. And my parents in the video are like ‘What are you doing, where’s the letter,’ and I was just screaming ‘I got in, I got in.” I just started crying, and it just felt like everything in the world came together.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ariana-2-300x217.jpg)
Frequent visitors of YouTube may have acknowledged the increasingly noticeable presence of advertising banners adorning favorite music videos. These omnipresent logos and ads are the product of the video advertising company VEVO which launched in December 2009. The VEVO website had an astonishing number of views upon its opening, overshooting even estimates for its yearly goal. The site now gets over 60 million visitors each month and about 1.7 billion worldwide streams in the U.S. and Canada. Despite being riddled with glitches and other problems, its popularity has risen quickly over the past year to become one of the most comprehensive music video streaming sites, partnering with internet giants like YouTube to increase their audience.
The company’s president and CEO, Rio D. Caraeff, has confirmed that VEVO’s goal is ultimately profit, both for the artists and for VEVO itself. About 50 percent of ad sales go directly back to the artist, and the VEVO site has a shop where fans can buy artist’s merchandise. It also provides links directly to iTunes and Amazon to make purchasing an artist’s songs easier. VEVO intends to collectively organize music videos in a single comprehensive and professional way. Already boasting an extensive library of music from major record groups such as Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and the Abu Dhabi Media Company, the company will continue to grow over the coming years. No more clicking through pages of YouTube videos to find a high quality version of a favorite song; it’s most likely on VEVO.
“It can definitely help get more music out there and to a wider audience. I mean, once a band starts getting pretty well known, you need some form of money to help constitute it.” Austin Miles, senior said. “But this could create more of an easy market than art.”
Quite a few people are unhappy about VEVO, arguing that the company has purely profit-driven motives.
“Sure, it’s nice for bands that are signed with a record label,” Liano Perez, senior, said. “But VEVO writes off smaller bands because they will focus on promoting the bigger, more profitable ones.”
As VEVO continues to grow, their viewers can only hope that ad space stays to a minimum and that a wide variety of music is presented. Plans are in the works for VEVO to expand their already far-reaching corporate image beyond music videos and merchandise as the company hopes to expand on its original content with band interviews and live concerts. Love it or hate it, the advertising conglomerate is poised to stick around for a while.
