The technology used by YouTube allows high quality video to be streamed directly into a web browser, without requiring a special download. Among the thousands of videos on offer are home movies, obscure vintage adverts and ‘You’ve Been Framed’-style viral comedy clips. But it is clear that a great deal of the site’s content is copyrighted material such as hit music videos and TV shows. Accordingly, rightsowners like NBC have begun to take action, first demanding that their material be removed, and more recently licensing their content legitimately to YouTube.
Now some indie record labels are uploading their music videos to the site - and YouTube has revealed plans to challenge the likes of MusicBrigade and Yahoo to ‘have every music video ever created up on YouTube' - for free. EMI and Warner Music are both believed to be in discussions with YouTube, though gaining permission from all the majors is likely to be an extremely expensive endeavour for the company. Currently the site is using venture capital to cover its running costs and is gradually phasing in an advertising driven revenue model now that its user base is reaching critical mass. In addition, analysts predict that the site will put itself up for sale in much the same way as MySpace did.
Alliance licensing perspective
The MCPS-PRS Alliance is examining the licensing options for user generated content sites such as YouTube.
This article originally appeared in M21, published September 2006.