IRPS, YouTube sign licensing pact on shared musical videos

New Delhi: Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) and YouTube today announced a licensing pact that will allow song-writers, music composers and music publishers to earn revenue from the videos shared on the website. Indian music publishers, composers and authors who are members of IPRS will derive their share of revenue from the society for their works accessed on YouTube, a statement said. This is YouTube’s first collection society deal in India. YouTube generates revenue from advertisements displayed against YouTube partner’s videos. [caption id=“attachment_133527” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] “We are extremely delighted to do this deal with leading video site like YouTube, as this association will benefit our publishers/music companies, author and sister societies. As more users get online, consumption and monetisation of music will increasingly happen on the Internet and YouTube will drive it,” IPRS CEO Rakesh Nigam said. In India, YouTube has already signed deals with music labels like T-Series and Saregama who represent about 70 per cent of the songs from the Hindi film industry. The agreement will open up new opportunities for the entire music industry in India to leverage the YouTube platform as an additional distribution channel and revenue source, the statement said. YouTube Director Product Management (Asia Pacific) Adam Smith said, “This is yet another step in YouTube’s ongoing effort to help foster the creation of Indian content and reward local artists for original works available online. “We are extremely pleased to have reached an agreement with IPRS that both fosters musical talent and enables this talent to receive payment for videos on YouTube.” Throughout the Asia-Pacific region, YouTube has similar agreements with associations representing artists and authors. Over the past few years, YouTube has signed deals with partners including JASRAC in Japan, KOMCA in Korea, CASH in Hong Kong, MUST in Taiwan, APRA-AMCOS for Australia/New Zealand, FILSCAP in the Philippines, and COMPASS in Singapore. PTI