YouTube and Warner Music Could Call It a Truce

As contract renegotiation halted at the end of 2008, Warner Music and YouTube seem to finally have reached an agreement that will please both parts, CNET reports. This agreement will lift the ban imposed by YouTube over its users for any content submission containing any piece of audio from Warner-Music artists.

In the month of December 2008, a Warner Music statement read, “We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists' content to the site. Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.”

Days later, Google answered with, “If we can't reach acceptable business terms, we must part ways with successful partners.” This then led to a messy campaign in which YouTube muted million of videos that contained audio from a Warner-Music artist, outraging many of its users.

As a source confirmed for CNET, the two companies have realized that this stalemate in the negotiating process needs to be passed and, as a result, the talks have been restarted. Because of other lucrative deals it has in place with Universal and other media companies, YouTube and its partners are making more and more money as the time passes. Realizing that all this time they were both losing, the companies have called it a truce and will be making a public statement soon as the new contract is signed.

Google can now only hope to duplicate YouTube's legal success in its Google-Books deal, because, at this moment, the video-sharing service has major deals with all music- and video-production companies around the world. Its repertoire includes music giants EMI, Universal and Sony Music, and also film studios like Disney, U.K.'s Performance Right Society and Sony Pictures.