YouTube wants to add legal, licensed content to the millions of online video clips posted on the site each day. Yesterday, the viral video site said it's talking to major record labels about gaining
the right to post music videos online. "What we really want to do is in six to 12 months, maybe 18 months, to have every music video ever created up on YouTube," co-founder Steve Chen told Reuters.
Chen said any commercial model it uses will offer the videos for free. The California-based Web site says its videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online. Some 100 million videos are
watched on the site daily. YouTube plans to integrate the record companies' videos into the community features of the site, allowing users to add the videos to their own profiles and post reviews,
similar to ones on Amazon.com. Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI confirmed to Reuters that they have been in discussions with YouTube. Getting the record labels to agree to a business model is
crucial--YouTube got into trouble when its users posted copyrighted videos from TV shows. The most famous example, of course, is the forced removal by NBC of the "Saturday Night Live" skit "Lazy
Sunday." That dispute turned out to be a precursor to a promotional partnership between NBC and YouTube a few months later. "We're obviously interested in legitimate-use scenarios and trying to
broaden those. Our focus with YouTube is how to be partners while protecting our artists and ensuring they get paid," says Michael Nash, svp of digital and business development at Warner Music.
Read the whole story at Reuters.com »
