YouTube has secured an agreement with the UK societies that collect royalties for 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers to legitimise the use of recorded music on Google's popular video-sharing website.
The agreement to license 10m pieces of music to YouTube - in return for a flat fee which has not been disclosed - is the first of its kind, said Steve Porter, chief executive of the MCPS-PRS Alliance. "This is the first fully formed agreement," he said, although some US collecting societies had reached interim arrangements with YouTube.
The agreement marks another milestone in YouTube's attempts to win over owners of media content, who have expressed alarm at the amount of material available on the site that is either pirated or that generates no revenue for the companies that created it.
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