MTV to premiere Britney's latest video on Web first

britneyFor the second time in the past seven days, MTV Networks has chosen an alternative distribution method for new content. This time, MTV will premier Britney Spears’ new music video “Piece of Me” exclusively on its Web site.

Starting Friday at 11 p.m. ET, MTV.com will showcase “Piece of Me”, the second video off Spears’ recently released album “Blackout”, for 48 hours. Afterward, the video will go into rotation on MTV’s cable TV channels.

Just last week, Paramount Pictures and MTV announced they were using a different distribution strategy for the latest movie in the Jackass franchise, “Jackass 2.5.” It will be streamed free of charge before being released later on download-to-own services such as iTunes and Blockbuster’s Movielink and DVD.

“Jackass 2.5” and Britney Spears, a tabloid favorite, certainly aren’t the best that the movie and music worlds have to offer, but it’s obvious MTV and Paramount are paying attention where there youthful customers are — and that’s on the Internet, not always in front of their TVs and at the movie theater.

Expect more of these experiments to follow.

What will be interesting to see is if any major studio, TV network, or music label will follow by premiering content targeted at different demographics, not just youth and the fans of Jackass and Britney.

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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