Watch Katy Perry’s YouTube video… then buy the song
The question of how labels and artists actually make money from YouTube has been a live issue in recent times, but Google’s video-sharing site has just introduced another option.
It’s inserting click-to-buy links below selected videos, with music one of the first categories to get the treatment. So, if you watch the official video for Katy Perry’s `I Kissed A Girl’, there are buttons to buy the song from iTunes or Amazon.
YouTube is also providing Amazon links for games like Electronic Arts’ `Spore’. Google says “this is just the beginning of building a broad, viable e-commerce platform for users and partners on YouTube”. The initiative will apparently also work for user-generated videos – for example, bedroom cover versions of ‘I Kissed A Girl’ – but only if the rightsholder has ‘claimed’ them.
Tags: advertising, katy perry, youtube
October 8th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Well I was hoping to beat YouTube to the punch on making an announcement. I have been developing this on my site http://NowScene.com. It seemed only logical for YouTube which is now becoming the place for artists to get exposure, to incorporate links for people to purchase MP3s. I show a link to Amazon next to every live music video I display. Works pretty well. But because the video title also contains location information. I inform my customers to click the link then remove any extra text from the artist information for better results. But I will make improvements in the future.
More power to YouTube’s success with this. I certainly believe in the concept since I developed this too. More improvements in the future since this the site is still early stage. But I wanted it documented that I did this first before YouTube made their announcement today.
-Randy O
Founder http://NowScene.com