Dailymotion to Expand Music Video Catalogue with EMI Deal

Slowly but surely, music is making its way online the way users want it to be, free and universally available. We're not quite there yet, but a new deal between Dailymotion and EMI is taking it one step closer. The European video outlet will begin hosting videos from EMI artists starting April and will make them available across all of its distribution channels, the site, its iPhone app and even on Internet-enabled TVs.

“EMI and Dailymotion are delivering what our large audience of music lovers truly want – to watch the music videos they love on their screen of choice,” Joy Marcus, general manager of Dailymotion US said in a statement. “We are delighted to be adding EMI to our strong roster of music partners including Universal Music Group and The Orchard.”

Videos from artists like Coldplay, Katy Perry, Robbie Williams, David Guetta will be available for free in a couple of months on the site which now boasts 65 million users worldwide. The French video site is particularly popular in Europe but is looking to expand in the US as well. It serves about one billion videos every month, just like Hulu managed last month. YouTube streams more than one billion videos every day.

It's not clear if the videos are geo-locked or will be available to all users around the world. EMI joins major label Universal Music Group and indie music digital distributor The Orchard in licensing its catalogue, EMI says thousands of videos will be available to Dailymotion. EMI will serve ads against the videos on all platforms using Dailymotion's own ad network and the deal is meant to widen the reach of the labels video content. EMI has partnered with UMG and Sony Music in the Vevo music video joint-venture which is available only in the US.

“Dailymotion offers the value of a powerful, new environment where our artists can showcase their work and create deeper relationships with fans. It allows consumers to watch music videos by their favourites artists at any time on the screen of their choice” said Mark Piibe, global head of Digital Business development, EMI Music.