Facebook is gearing up to battle YouTube to be the top destination for music videos and other content containing copyright-protected songs, according to a new report.
The company is said to be offering music publishers hundreds of millions of dollars to retain the rights to music featured in videos uploaded by users and page owners.
It’s a way to, at least initially, stave off the concerns of the copyright holders who must tirelessly work through Facebook to get the content taken down.
Down the line, however, Facebook hopes to build a system for identifying videos with copyrighted content, similar to Google’s landmark Content ID system, that would pave the way for the social network to rival YouTube as the internet’s top-tier video service and, possibly, even a streaming music contender.
