Is there an AMV publishing company?

[AMV Viewer]

This would be the record-label equivalent for AMVs. If there is no such thing, why do you think that is?

[ExSphere]

I heard of this website called animemusicvideos.org that holds thousands of amv's. But I think it's just a myth.

[AMV Viewer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label

[Kitsuner]

The closest thing to what you're asking are studios that editors associate themselves with, but there is no official or professional organization involved in AMVs except a-m-v.org, mostly due to copyright issues.

[AMV Viewer]

Is that it? The copyright issues seem only slightly difficult to work out at a corporate level. Any other reasons?

[Knowname]

slightly difficult

[Kionon]

If the anime rights holders can get permission to use the song, then they sometimes have put AMVs on as extras, but this is a rarity.

[Brad]

AMV creation is in no way a "legal" hobby. We copy the music into our video (which is most of the time copywritten), and we copy the source footage into our video which is also copywritten. As Kionon stated, for there to be any legal distribution or commoditization of them, whoever was doing the distributing would have to hold the legal rights to distribute both the video footage and the music. Both of which can costs vast amounts of money. For a product that for all intents and purposes has always been free to acquire, the idea of distributing them for profit (with all of the costs associated) is not only very complicated but is just an awful business.

[Brad]

I also meant to mention that, while it is technically not legal to distribute AMVs (without holding the rights to both the audio and video), we do exist in a somewhat gray area because the parties involved (mostly, the anime distributors) pretty much turn a blind eye to it. In many cases they have endorsed the hobby and see it as free publicity for their titles. The larger problem is with the music, which has been a legal issue in the past in relation to this web site (which is why you won't see any videos featuring Evanescence, Creed, or Seether hosted on the Org). But, we survive mostly through obscurity. It's a small enough hobby/community that it's just not that big of a problem for all practical points. However, we're also not using the Org or AMVs in general for profit, which is where having a business model around it becomes a bad idea.

[gotegenks]

i've seen some anime commercials that feel very amv-ish

joey also linked me to a matrix video that was the official video for it's song, it used entirely matrix footage though and felt exactly like a fan-made video...i can't remember what it was called though ><