Looking to avoid a similar legal mess to that of YouTube, Yahoo announced that it had reached a licensing deal with Sony BMG…
Yahoo and Sony BMG Music Entertainment have announced a licensing deal that clears the way for people to upload files with music or video content by the record company’s artists to Yahoo, the companies said Tuesday.
“The deal allows Yahoo to distribute Sony BMG content through applications and widgets that the portal’s users can embed in their own Web sites.”
The agreement with Sony BMG marks the first time Sunnyvale-based Yahoo has reached a deal with a major recording company over licensing content in user-created videos. The new agreement also gives Yahoo access to more music videos, and the right to distribute Sony BMG recordings to more territories around the world.
Sony BMG, home to recording artists such popular as Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Lopez, the Foo Fighters, Celine Dion, and Slayer, reached a similar licensing deal with Google last year. That agreement also includes YouTube.
The latest agreement also allows Yahoo to distribute Sony BMG content through applications and widgets that the portal’s users can embed in their own Web sites. The content can only be played through Yahoo’s branded player, which provides copyright protection.
“The companies will share advertising revenue, but financial details were not disclosed.”
Like the YouTube deal, Sony will receive a portion of the ad revenue from pages where its content appears. Yahoo may allow content from the BMG’s artists to be uploaded to its web properties.
“This partnership not only enhances our video offerings, but also offers Sony BMG artists broad exposure among our global audience of music and entertainment fans,” Yahoo Music chief Ian Rogers said.
The two companies already have an existing content deal, but this expanded agreement will add more video to Yahoo’s catalog and allow Sony BMG artists’ audio to be used in user-generated Yahoo audiovisual content. Additionally, Sony BMG media on Yahoo will be available in more regions across the globe.
This is the latest in a series of music video deals that Sony BMG, a joint venture between Bertelsmann and Sony Corp., has made. Last month, the label announced that it would be offering videos on MySpace.com, and it already has a deal in place with Google and its YouTube subsidiary, as well as several social-music sites like Imeem.
The unauthorized use of video or music on social networks and other Web sites have led to tension, and sometimes lawsuits, between media and Internet companies.
In an attempt to find a solution, last month, a coalition of major media, technology and Internet companies issued a set of guidelines requiring Web portals that host user-generated videos — as Yahoo does — to use filtering technology to block clips with unauthorized content from being posted. Those companies included Fox, CBS, NBC Universal, Walt Disney, MySpace, Viacom, and Microsoft.
“Independently, Yahoo is deploying video identification and filtering technology early next year, the company said.”
However, development and implementation of technology needed to make that a reality is still in the future, and that might prove more difficult than the big media suits assume.
Absent from the agreement was Google, which owns the most popular online video site YouTube. Viacom has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against the two companies, accusing them of “brazen disregard” for intellectual property.