Norah Jones and Hulu Unintentionally Create Good Idea Having Nothing To Do With Norah Jones

Norah Jones is not really an actress. Yes, she was in that Wong Kar Wai movie My Blueberry Nights, but her career path does not exactly fit itself into Hulu’s wheelhouse. And yet today was her big debut; she now has an entire page dedicated to her on the streaming video site. Why? Because she can sing, and all of a sudden Hulu is a place for music videos, not just all the TV and movie clips we’ve gotten accustomed to.

This is part of a larger arrangement Hulu now has with Jones’ record label, EMI. Hulu won’t just become a repository for music videos, a la MTV’s streaming service or Sony (SNE) and Universal’s upcoming site, Vevo. Instead it’s going to offer fans—how many times have we heard this before?—an “immersive experience.” Jones’ page on Hulu has all sorts of live performances alongside her music videos, and can presumably house anything else she records. The videos run with a pre-roll ad, so the more videos, the better for Hulu’s bottom line.

This move is most interesting, though, for the new possibilities it opens. If Hulu is willing to make a page for one specific person in music, why can’t/shouldn’t they for one specific person in movies or TV? Would you watch a collection of Jane Lynch scenes from Glee? Tony Hale in Arrested Development and Chuck? Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock? Of course you would. As of now, Hulu is still a site focused on the macro. It organizes by show, not stars inside the show. But there’s nothing stopping it from going small, tagging different excerpts with the actors’ names so that it can have hundreds of pages of beloved actors. Think of it like a iTunes Genius playlist—the page would be automatically updated with all the newest clips, populating like a streaming-video RSS feed. And think of the search-engine optimization potential! Every time someone searches “America Ferrera” on Google, one of the top returns could be the Hulu landing page. There’s no reason not do to this, other than the time involved with tagging the clips. Hulu has already changed the way we watch TV and movies. It has the potential to change the way we watch stars, too.