Warner Music agrees to flash its videos on YouTube

Warner Music Group Corp. has agreed to make its library of videos and music available to YouTube Inc., and signed the partnership deal with the oneline video trendsetter site on Monday.

Under the agreement, the social Web site YouTube that allows its users to upload, view, and share video clips will provide users full access to videos from Warner artists such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sean Paul, legally for the first time. The users will also be permitted incorporate contents from those videos into their own clips, which are then uploaded to YouTube.

Before the deal, music videos belonging to Warner Music and other record companies are regularly uploaded to YouTube by its users but often without permission from the labels.

"Warner Music Group becomes the first media company working with us to truly embrace the power of user-generated content and allow users to use their content in legal ways," YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley said in a statement.

YouTube, which has signed its first commercial tie-up with Warner Music Group, will share online advertising revenue sold in connection with the video content with the music company.

The deal that addresses the issue how to deal with copyrighted content on the free web service comes just days after Universal Music Group, which is owned by French media conglomerate Vivendi SA, portrayed YouTube and News Corp.'s social networking site MySpace of being copyright violators, who the company said owe the music industry tens of millions of dollars.

San Mateo, California based YouTube, which has more than 100 million video watched everyday, and Warner Music, one of the four major record labels, said in a statement on Monday that the tie-up would help Warner distribute music videos, behind-the-scenes footage, artist interviews and original programming.

YouTube is developing new software that automatically identifies copyrighted music and video content uploaded to the site, which will help manage payment to the record labels. YouTube says the technology will empower Warner Music to review the video and decide whether it wants to approve or reject it. A portion of the revenue from ads spotted near the copyrighted content will go to the owner of the copyright.

Warner Music had already entered into an advertising deal with YouTube last month to promote Paris Hilton's album, “Paris”, for its new Brand Channel advertising.

Although, Warner Music is the first media company to enter into such a deal, but YouTube intends to pursue similar tie-ups with other large groups.