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NEW YORK - EMI has joined the other three major music companies in letting YouTube users play with its music videos, allowing people to get clips by the likes of David Bowie, Norah Jones and Coldplay from the Google-owned site and edit them into their own videos.
London-based EMI Group Plc, the third-largest music company, said on Thursday it signed a deal with Google Inc, the last of the four major record companies to be convinced that YouTube's technology would be sufficient to prevent rampant infringement by users.
EMI and YouTube said they are still working on developing business models to generate revenue, particularly with regards to new areas such as allowing users to create 'mash-up' videos that include their own content alongside EMI music and clips.
"With this deal, all four of the world's major music companies are now official YouTube partners," Chad Hurley, chief executive and co-founder of YouTube, said in a statement.
The agreement follows copyright lawsuits filed by media companies that accused YouTube of allowing its users to pirate their programmes on the popular video-sharing site.
Though YouTube has agreements with some companies, they have not all been convinced by its claims that the site will be able to efficiently identify and remove illegally uploaded video clips by its users. In March, Viacom Inc filed a US$1 billion ($1.37 billion) copyright suit against Google.
EMI will use the YouTube content management system to help the music company track its content and pay its artists, the companies said. No financial terms were disclosed.
YouTube business development director Chris Maxcy said his company will be sharing advertising revenue with EMI in similar arrangements to what it has with other media partners.
The company is also in early tests of a new audio library tool called 'AudioSwap,' which allows users to replace the original audio of a clip with audio from the library. Maxcy said music companies are working with YouTube to help build the library.
Last year, Warner Music Group Corp, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Entertainment each signed content deals with YouTube. As part of the agreements, each music company took a small stake in YouTube prior to it being bought by Google, according to sources familiar with the talks.
Though EMI was late with a YouTube agreement, at least one of its acts, OK Go -- signed to its Capitol label -- was a huge hit on YouTube over a year ago.
OK Go's video for the song Here It Goes Again, also known as the treadmill video, has been viewed millions of times on the site, as was the group's previous video A Million Ways, which inspired a widely imitated dance routine.
All four music companies allow YouTube users to integrate their artists' music and videos into users' own videos.
Following news of the pact, Google shares rose 1.5 per cent to US$506, the first time they broke US$500 in 5 months. But the shares closed at US$497.91 on Nasdaq, off 69 cents for the day. EMI shares ended little changed in London, down 0.09 per cent at 275 pence.
- REUTERS
