Warner Music and YouTube come to Terms

A few months back, I wrote a post admonishing Warner Music for their draconian stance when it came to the work of their artists on Youtube.

Well, Warner Music and Google have now come to financial terms and Warner Music seems poised to return to the site in full force, joining the other major labels as content providers. In exchange, Warner Music gets the majority of the ad revenue generated by clips of their content.

Now, I don't know what this means for the future of mashup works like Mad Max with Ace of Spades for instance, but I hope that if Warner Music are able to say that those clips contain their intellectual property and thus, they get paid their agreed upon ad revenues, that this kind of work will not only survive but thrive under this agreement (after all, this whole thing seems to be all about money, so if they are getting paid, then we should all be happy).

What I am really afraid of however is that a) Warner is going to be very protective of their IP and b) the other media companies might want to get the same agreement WMG has if they don't already, and may use their power as copyright holders to get it, to the detriment of the end user.

So while I welcome that library of songs back into the fold, I am still looking out for some of the ripples this agreement may have started.

Tags: youtube, warner music, universal, mad max, ace of spades, motorhead, mashups, intellectual property