AOL Debuts Music Sessions, Eliminates Other Services

AOL Music/Crandal and Spinella of AOL with BeyonceCoinciding with the release of Beyonce's latest album, AOL Music today is expected to debut an AOL Music Sessions segment featuring the pop princess.

AOL Music is the most-visited music portal online--attracting over 100 million unique global visitors a month, according to comScore. Stateside, AOL Music draws over 20 million domestic unique visitors a month.

The move represents efforts by the embattled Time Warner unit to innovate and stay relevant in the face of diminishing resources.

To cut costs and focus the company's direction, AOL is in the process of eliminating various services. Hometown AOL, a service that hosted Web sites for AOL customers, closed down at the end of October. The AOL Pictures photo-sharing site, meanwhile, is expected to close by the end of the year.

Just this weekend, for example, industry blog TechCrunch broke the news that AOL was cutting its Uncut online user-generated video service.

In addition, after years of handling video content management internally, AOL recently announced plans to hand those duties over to Brightcove.

The transition, expected to be completed by early next year, will leave the thriving online video platform with control over AOL's video content management, publishing, and playback duties.

In the spirit of producing content amid widespread cost-cutting, AOL Living recently announced plans for a 5-minute video feature highlighting the top five morning-show moments of the day.

Created for time-strapped consumers, "Morning Rush" feature highlights from "Good Morning America," "The Today Show," "The CBS Early Show," CNN's "American Morning," and Fox News' "Mike & Juliette." It will be posted each day by noon.

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