Warner Music and YouTube are close to an agreement that would see the return of the music company’s video clips to Google’s video-sharing site after a nine-month licensing dispute.
The agreement, which is expected to be announced this week, would allow Warner to retain the right to sell ads that run next to its videos and keep the bulk of the revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Warner, home to artists including Coldplay and Madonna, is enlisting third parties to sell the ads and line up more lucrative arrangements like sponsorships for particular videos or artists.
The deal could address one of the music company’s biggest complaints about YouTube: that the ads that currently run on the site do not generate sufficient revenue for Warner.
Warner withdrew permission for YouTube to use its videos in December, when the two sides failed to reach a licensing agreement.
The new deal closely resembles the agreement YouTube reached in March with Universal Music Group, the world’s largest recorded music company by sales and market share.
Under the deal, individual artists’ pages or channels would be redesigned to emphasize things like digital-download sales and links to the artists’ own web sites.
The pages could also be customized for corporate sponsors. Meanwhile, Universal is planning to create a freestanding web site for music videos, called Vevo, for which it hopes to license videos from other music companies.
Sony Music Entertainment joined the plan in June. So far the other major music companies, Warner and EMI Group Ltd, have not signed on.
YouTube earlier this year struck another such advertising-based content partnership with Walt Disney, which is distributing clips of ABC and ESPN shows on the site.
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