YouTube to Pay Royalties to French Composers

Google's YouTube struck a deal Sept 30 with France's biggest music-rights body to pay composers when their songs are viewed on the video-sharing website.

Under the agreement, the French society for authors, composers and music publishers -- a trade body that collects music royalties -- will receive payments from YouTube, a spokeswoman for the group known by the initials SACEM. SACEM will then redistribute the money to its members based on the number of times their songs have been viewed. The deal retroactively covers all copyrighted music played in France on YouTube from 2007 and runs until 2012. The financial details of the agreement were not revealed because of a confidentiality clause, but the deal is unlikely to generate huge sums of cash for the copyright holders involved, said Catherine Kerr-Vignale, the deputy director of SACEM. "It's more a symbolically important step," she said. The deal comes as YouTube looks to placate European copyright owners who feel the site is facilitating unauthorized access to free music.