Google Acquires Rightsflow To Help Pay Artists On Youtube
Google has just acquired RightsFlow, a company specializing in making sure artists and labels get paid for their music. And Google, which acquired YouTube for $1.64 billion back in 2006, plans to employ the New York-based company to help ensure that all those samples, mashups, remixes, and outright pirated clips floating around the video-sharing site are being paid for, according to Mashable.
“By combining RightsFlow’s expertise and technology with YouTube’s platform,” announced YouTube in a statement released today, “we hope to more rapidly and efficiently license music on YouTube, meaning more music for you all to enjoy, and more money for the talented people producing the music.
RightsFlow is more than just an intellectual property service company, though. Since it founded in 2007, it has compiled a database of more than 30 million songs, from nearly 10,000 labels, and developed a technology to scan the database and identify songs being played written by artists deserving payment. And then it can figure out how much payment is owed and complete the transaction.
“Our goals remain to enable the monetization of music and content consumption, to simplify the complexities surrounding copyright compliance, and to ensure that creators are paid for the use of their work,” said RightsFlow in a statement regarding the acquisition.
When RightsFlow searches YouTube’s collection, it will likely often find the same song in many different videos, some legal, others not. YouTube’s existing Content ID System can already tell which is which, but with the newly acquired RightsFlow technology it can now determine how much is owed and provide a platform for payment.
YouTube pays approximately $7.60 per 250,000 downloads.