Facebook in Talks with Major Labels to Buy Rights to Music Catalogues
Ever posted a personal video on Facebook with music in the background only to have it yanked by the copyright police just a few hours later? Yeah, it stinks, especially given how hard Facebook has been pushing its video platform of late.
Facebook is aware of the problem and is allegedly taking steps to fix it: according to Bloomberg [via Metal Injection], Facebook is working to acquire the rights to have music included in user-uploaded videos, and they’re prepared to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to do it.
From Bloomberg:
“Facebook Inc. is offering major record labels and music publishers hundreds of millions of dollars so the users of its social network can legally include songs in videos they upload, according to people familiar with the matter.
“The posting and viewing of video on Facebook has exploded in recent years, and many of the videos feature music to which Facebook doesn’t have the rights. Under current law, rights holders must ask Facebook to take down videos with infringing material.
“Music owners have been negotiating with Facebook for months in search of a solution, and Facebook has promised to build a system to identify and tag music that infringes copyrights. Yet such a setup will take as long as two years to complete, which is too long for both sides to wait, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing details that aren’t public.”
The article also reveals that Facebook will continue to invest in and push its video platform, with sharing of videos expected to surpass text and photos in the coming years and advertising revenue to follow, all of which could pose serious competition to YouTube.
