Wednesday, Nov 21, 2007    Text size: 

This is the first time that Yahoo has been successful in licensing material from a major record label for use in user-generated content appearing on the Yahoo website.

"Yahoo is committed to providing our users with the most comprehensive array of entertainment content," said Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo Music. "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."

While details of the deal, which includes media available through the Yahoo! player as well as via its web-enabled widgets were not made public, Sony BMG will receive a percentage of Yahoo’s advertising revenue.

Sony BMG, a partnership of Sony America and Bertelsmann, A.G., represents a wide range of artists, including Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Billy Joel.

"Yahoo is a leading force in Internet entertainment, and they are an important part of our overall strategy to make our artists' music videos widely available, while at the same time building a strong future for our online businesses," Sony BMG's Thomas Hesse said. "We are happy to extend our agreement with Yahoo and look forward to continuing our relationship."

While the Yahoo player offers built-in copy protection, copyrighted materials often are included in the user-generated content that is so popular with Web 2.0 users, resulting in industry efforts to license these materials. Yahoo also is developing video fingerprinting and filtering mechanisms to help ensure copyright compliance.

Previously, Sony BMG had entered into a similar agreement with Google over videos available on the search engine as well as its YouTube social network.