Teosto and YouTube reach a deal for music

Finnish music creators, composers and authors to benefit financially from having their videos on YouTube.

YouTube and Teosto, representing 27 000 Finnish music authors and publishers,  today announced a licensing agreement that will allow Finnish and international music creators, composers and authors to earn revenue in Finland on YouTube.

It allows rightsholders and affiliates represented by Teosto to be paid when their music is accessed on YouTube in Finland. Revenue is generated when advertisements are displayed against YouTube partner’s videos and Fan Picked Videos.

“YouTube is the one of the most popular music services in Finland. It’s very important that music creators are now also compensated from YouTube usage in Finland. We feel that streaming services will be an even more important channel for music in the future and this licence agreement with YouTube is also in this respect an important milestone”, says Teosto´s CEO Katri Sipilä.

“We are extremely pleased to have reached an agreement with Teosto that enables music artists, composers and authors to receive payments for videos on YouTube in Finland”, says Gudrun Schweppe, Head of Music Publishing at YouTube in EMEA. “It’s also a big win for the YouTube community, to whom listening to music and discovering new local artists on YouTube is an important part of their online experience.”

Throughout Europe, YouTube is succeeding in securing mutually beneficial agreements with associations representing composers and authors and has deals in place with a number of music creators’ rights organizations, including with PRS for Music in the UK, SGAE in Spain, SIAE in Italy, SACEM in France, AKM in Austria and SUISA in Switzerland.