Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed, in exchange for a slice of Yahoo’s advertising revenue, to let Yahoo’s users upload videos and music clips containing its produced content.
The deal comes just over a year since Sony made a very similar agreement with Google that also entailed the release of “thousands” of music videos on Google Video (and, soon after, YouTube as well). While Google has actually secured distribution deals with all four major labels by now, this deal is Yahoo’s first and it does not suggest that Sony will actively release produced content onto Yahoo Video.
Yahoo has also suggested that it will begin using “video identification and filtering technology” by early 2008, which sounds similar to the technology deployed by Google last month.
Yahoo Video, while a fraction of YouTube’s size in terms of users, comes in at second place among all video-sharing sites.
No word yet as to whether today’s announcement involves talent-discovery site Crackle in any way.
Via Associated Press