Facebook is looking into the possibility to pay a total of “hundreds of millions” of dollars to the major labels to purchase music rights to their artists’ music, and with that ensure their users to be able to include music in their videos without the threat of those videos being taken down again.
The fact that this announcement was made just now is not really coincidental, as it turns out that Facebook is looking to challenge YouTube as the world’s leading site for videos.
Youtube has received some backlash from the industry in the past, as they allegedly pay too little to their creators. They’ve also been under fire for not respecting intellectual property enough.
Bloomberg Industry also shared some insight on the recent news:
“Getting into business with Facebook presents something of a Faustian bargain. Rights holders need a deal. Given the current legal framework for copyright online, users are going to upload video with infringing material no matter what. The onus is on rights holders to police those videos. A deal ensures they get something rather than waste resources tracking down all the illegal videos.”
Facebook is very eager for this deal to go through to avoid frustration with their users as they enroll a new feature called Watch, a new Facebook hub, which is a new place for creators and pages to share their videos. Facebook is attempting to attract billions of additional advertisement revenue. They are also looking into creating their original content for the new Facebook feature.
What do you think? Does Facebook have what it takes to challenge YouTube?
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