Universal Music seeing 'tens of millions' from YouTube

YouTube's traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine, reports cnet news.

Universal is starting to see some significant cash from its deal with the video-sharing site for two reasons: first, YouTube's recent efforts to find a business model are working. The other is that music, by far the strongest single segment on YouTube, has always been a major draw.

Doug Morris, Universal's CEO, has led the industry to set up videos as a revenue stream. Since 2005, Universal has gone from making zero dollars on music videos to nearly $100 million."

"(YouTube) is not like radio, where it's just promotional," said Caraeff, who heads up Universal's digital group. "It's a revenue stream, a commercial business. It's growing tremendously. It's up almost 80 percent for us year-over-year in the U.S. in terms of our revenue from this category."

emily | 8:35 AM | YouTube |
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