YouTube & Warner Strike Music Licensing Deal
YouTube and Warner Music have announced an advertising revenue sharing deal with will distribute and license Warner Music Group Corp’s copyrighted songs and other material through YouTube.
Under the deal, Warner Music has agreed to license its songs to the people who upload their videos to YouTube. Meaning that any video producer can now legally use Warner Music in their videos as theme or background music, or even produce alternative videos for Warner songs.
Who’s in the Warner Family of licensed music? Count Zepplin, the Doors, Green Day, Wilco, Linkin Park and even Frank Zappa as part of that family (yes, Warner owns Rykodisc).
Ideally, under the new YouTube / Warner agreement, if I want to set my YouTube video to the beat of Peaches En Regalia or St. Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast, now I can do so under this licensing agreement, without worry of the Zappa kids coming after me.
More from Reuters:
YouTube, which has over 100 million video viewed everyday, and Warner Music, the world’s fourth biggest record company, said on Monday that the pact would help Warner distribute music videos, behind-the-scenes footage, artist interviews and original programming.
The companies said YouTube users would also be able to incorporate music from Warner’s catalog into the videos they create and upload.
Music videos belonging to Warner Music and other record companies are regularly uploaded to YouTube by its users but usually without permission from the labels.
