Videos by American Songwriter
The days of crossing your fingers and hoping YouTube doesn’t flag your video’s sweet soundtrack for copyright infringement may be nearing their end.
On June 29, Rumblefish launched Friendly Music, a service that lets users buy the license to a copyrighted song for $1.99, as long as it’s used for noncommercial purposes, i.e. wedding videos, 8th grade English projects, or the ever-enthralling vacation slide show.
“A lot of the users of YouTube are the everyday filmmakers, and they don’t have an outlet like this,” said Rumblefish Chief Executive, Paul Anthony.
At the moment, Friendly Music has about 35,000 songs, though they’ve yet to partner with any of the four major labels.
The partnership with Rumblefish isn’t the first move Google, who owns YouTube, has made in dealing with the issue of protected music in videos. In 2007, they introduced AudioSwap , a service that allows users switch their video’s audio track with a new track already approved by the copyright owners. Also, last year, many YouTube users were notified when Google stripped the audio from videos containing protected songs.
“We’re excited about this being a connection point, the first of many steps to make music really easy to use in video,” Anthony said.
No word on when such YouTube classic staples as “Working for the Weekend” and “The Final Countdown” will be available for legal use.
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