Warner Music has taken a step away from the pack of other music companies to ink a deal with the video sharing web site YouTube. This comes just one week after the CEO of Universal Music Group called out YouTube claiming that they violate copyright regulations by hosting content on their site that is uploaded without the proper approval of its owners.
Here's an overview of the how the partnership will work...
"YouTube will allow users to legitimately incorporate Warner content into their own video creations, while ensuring that Warner continues to receive a proportion of the advertising revenue generated."
...and here a few things that we like about Warner Music's approach
- Innovating the business model - Warner will receive non-traditional revenue from ads placed next to Warner's content or user-generated content that features Warner music or videos. This differs substantially from how music companies traditionally make money by producing and selling albums
- Understanding Jobs - YouTube has proven that there is an important Job to be done of "give me a place to create and/or post cool video content". It has also shown that there is an audience for this user-generated content. YouTube was reported to have more than 100 million videos viewed on a daily basis
- Experimentation - Warner Music does not appear to view this deal as the "silver bullet" solution but as an experiment where they can invest a little, earn a little and learn a lot
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