Yahoo, Sony BMG Sign Music Partnership

By: Rob Adams
Published: Nov 21, 2007
Updated: Mar 13, 2010

Yahoo has partnered with Sony BMG that enables customers to add music and video content for new music creations.

The conceivable deal expands the catalog of music videos on Yahoo Music from Sony BMG, whose artists include Alicia Keys, Daughtry, Bruce Springsteen and Jennifer Lopez. It also allows the distribution of videos through a worldwide media player that users can access on other Yahoo properties and embed on third-party sites.

Terms of the exact deal were not disclosed, but they include a revenue-sharing agreement between Yahoo and Sony BMG on video advertising.

The formal agreement marks the first time Yahoo has licensed content from a major record label in connection with user-generated videos. Sony BMG signed a similar licensing deal with Google last year, and struck another last month with social networking site MySpace.

Under that deal, Sony will license music videos, select audio material and other content from its artist roster, and will make the content available on its artists' MySpace profile pages. The sudden move reflects a growing willingness by music companies to make their assets available online with fewer restrictions.

Piracy has been a chief concern of record labels and other traditional media companies heading online. Last month, a group of major media and Internet companies including Disney, NBC Universal, MySpace and Veto officially announced a new set of rules calling for the use of filtering technologies and other steps to block the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in user-generated content online.

Yahoo is not part of the coalition, but plans to introduce its own monitoring and filtering systems for unauthorized content next year.