YouTube to offer EMI music clips

YouTube, the Google-owned video sharing site, will offer music videos by EMI artists. YouTube has signed a deal with EMI to give access to music videos by EMI artists.

The users of YouTube will be able to watch and play authorised videos and recordings from EMI artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones, and David Bowie. The deal between EMI and YouTube will also allows users to grab footage created by EMI artists and edit them into their own user-created videos.

Chad Hurley, chief executive and a founder of YouTube, said, "With this deal, all four of the world’s major music companies are now official YouTube partners."

YouTube had signed content deals with the Warner Music Group, the Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Entertainment, last year.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the two companies. However, it is believed that the EMI Group would make use of the current YouTube content management system to track its owned material and duly pay its artists. A report quoting an YouTube official said that its advertising revenue will be shared with EMI.

Meanwhile, EMI and YouTube have said that they are still in the process of developing applicable business models with which to create revenue from the deal.

The deal is also significant at a time when most media companies are not willing to enter into such a deal with YouTube. Companies like CBS have also openly criticized the service for its failure to honour a promised regulation feature that would identify and prevent the posting of copyrighted material to its pages.