EMI finally gets into bed with YouTube
Jun 1, 2007, 15:05 GMT
Finally following in the footsteps of Warner Music Group Corp., Universal Music Group, and Sony BMG Entertainment, the EMI Group has now joined up with the other major music companies by announcing a deal that will grant YouTube users with access to EMI music video clips.
Hot on the heels of London-based EMI’s recent high-profile DRM-free deal with the Apple iTunes Store, the world’s third biggest music company has this week announced it’s signed on the dotted line with Google-owned YouTube to allow users to grab footage created by EMI artists and edit them into their own user-created videos, confident that YouTube’s current technology will serve in preventing an overwhelming surge of copyright infringement.
“With this deal, all four of the world’s major music companies are now official YouTube partners,” enthused Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube, in an official statement.
EMI and YouTube have disclosed that they are still in the process of developing applicable business models with which to create revenue from the deal, with the aforementioned “mash up” artist/user videos being one such ongoing possibility. The agreement comes on the back of various copyright lawsuits that have landed at YouTube’s door with regard to turning a blind eye while users continually infringed on creative copyright laws.
Although no financial details related to the deal have been forthcoming from either party, EMI Group has stated that it will utilise the current YouTube content management system to track its owned material and duly pay its artists, with YouTube revealing that its advertising revenue will be shared with EMI – much as it is with existing media partners signed to similar content deals with the video-sharing service.
Not all media companies are willing to enter into such a deal with YouTube however, with the likes of CBS openly criticising the service for its failure to honour a promised regulation feature that would identify and prevent the posting of copyrighted material to its pages. Furthermore, American media conglomerate Viacom filed a $1 billion USD copyright infringement lawsuit against Google and YouTube earlier this year.
