Vimeo Joins The Exclusive Content Battlefield

Vimeo entered into the exclusive content playing field in 2013 with High Maintenance, its first original series that’s available exclusively on the company’s streaming site. Well, now Vimeo has decided to order six more episodes of the series and put them on its On Demand service.

The first 13 episodes are still available for free viewing on the company’s site.

The series follows a marijuana dealer as he makes deliveries to his clients whose mental and emotional ailments are as diverse as the city they all call home, according to Variety. The series was created by 30 Rock casting director Katja Blichfield, actor and editor Ben Sinclair, who has also appeared on 30 Rock among other shows, and manager Russell Gregory from Regarding Entertainment. They made it under the banner Janky Clown Productions.

“We’re all huge fans of ‘High Maintenance’ and couldn’t be happier to make our first original programming investment in a show that’s developed organically on Vimeo,” Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor told Variety.

With this series, Vimeo is now seen as a direct competitor with other streaming sites such as Netflix, Amazon, and Microsoft through their Xbox entertainment system, according to CNET. It even has the viewership to hang with the top dogs as well with 26 million registered users, and 170 million visitors from around the world each month streaming everything from YouTube-style user-generated content to professionally produced programming. So far, however, Netflix has had the most success with exclusive programming with hits such as House of Cards, which earned Robin Wright a Golden Globe, and its other breakout, Orange is the New Black.

Amazon has also seen a bit of success as well. IGN reports that Amazon Studios just recently renewed its comedy series Alpha House, its first dive into exclusive content, and has ordered six new original series that span many different genres. The show premiered in November, and became the most watched TV show on Amazon Instant Video. Its cast includes John Goodman and Mark Consuelos.

These sites are also putting a lot of money into exclusive content as well. The Verge‘s Jacob Kastrenakes reports that Vimeo put aside $10 million back in March for licensing programming on their Vimeo On Demand service. One thing that does set Vimeo apart from the other streaming services is that they’ll be charging per episode, not per month. Regarding that, Kastrenakes commented, “…if it does sell shows episode by episode, each one better be good.”

Vimeo’s details regarding pricing of the episodes, and when they’ll be available have not been announced yet.

[Image courtesy of Wolf Lambert via Wikimedia Commons]