Warner does streaming video deal with Google. Sound familiar?
As David Brent might say, you have to look at the whole pie. We’ve just seen that Google have bought YouTube. Fact. We also saw that last month Warner signed an agreement with YouTube, so I suppose it’s not surprising that Warner have also agreed to allow its music videos to be streamed on Google Videos.
The deal should mean that US residents (sheesh they always get the good stuff first) can watch thousands of music videos, interviews and behind the scenes footage, and Warner Music Group videos will also be available on Google’s partner websites. Google are also developing technology that will allow users to include authorised content from Warner and other record companies in videos that they create and upload.
It’s going to be interesting to see whether this deal was inked because of Google’s acquisition of YouTube (I can’t believe it was a coincidence) and how it will affect the services. I wrote in the post about Warner and YouTube: “What’s interesting is that YouTube have developed a royalty-tracking system that discovers when a user has uploaded video with copyrighted music on it, and then allows Warner to decide whether to approve or reject that video.”
Will this same system be ported across to Google? Will Google Video and YouTube share the same technology? Or will the services remain separate, serving different audiences?
It’s something Google will be keen to sort out, anyway, as there are legal concerns on both GV and YouTube. Getting all the major record labels on side (YouTube’s nearly there) will give the sites a major boost in terms of content and what users can legally do with copyrighted material.
