YouTube Gets a Little More Mainstream

Last night, a large delegation of Mass Comm 101 students (and your humble blogger) took in the Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Amidst all the gamer energy, some of the MC101s found their way to the Bowl Museum where they learned a bit about the facility's star-studded history.

Warner Music has signed an agreement with YouTube, the wildly-successful website where anyone can post their homemade videos so that everyone can view them. It allows music and videos in the Warner library to be used on YouTube, free of charge. This marks the first time that a major American record company has embraced what some believe is the future of entertainment.

The deal is a recognition by Warner that the bright line between content producers and content consumers has faded. Computer-savvy young people, for example, have grown accustomed to shooting their own video, finding some music to serve as the soundtrack, and posting the result on video-sharing sites like YouTube. A Warner Music executive quoted in a Sept. 19 Los Angeles Times article about the agreement said that fans from across the world are now free to create their own videos that reinterpret music from Green Day and other groups.

According to several of my students, making and posting a video about your car--complete with heart-racing soundtrack--is fairly popular.