Now You Can Buy Music On YouTube

Cheryl
Oct 8, 2008
Updated • Dec 2, 2012
Music and Video, Youtube
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Till now, YouTube was a place only for watching videos. Still, with other sites getting their act together, it was only a matter of time before these guys pulled up their socks and took a look at the services they offer.

What am I referring to? Well, the next time you're watching a video and decide you like the song that's playing in the background, you may just be able to purchase the song for your own music collection. YouTube has begun providing Amazon and iTunes links for videos.

These ‘click-to-buy' links are YouTube's way of making it easy for users to purchase something they like. And it's not limited only to music. In the case of video game related videos like trailers, a link to buy the game will be available.

As of now, download links are available only for partner videos i.e. content uploaded directly by companies (EMI, for example). Also, this feature is currently available only in the United States but that should change soon.

This is a pleasant surprise from YouTube. One instant bonus I can think of is that it makes it easy to identify the artist and song name for an unidentified video. What do you think about YouTube's click-to-buy service? Any other advantages or disadvantages you can come up with? Let me know in the comments.

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Comments

  1. Randy O said on October 8, 2008 at 11:50 pm
    Reply

    Well I was hoping to beat YouTube to the punch on making an announcement. I have been developing this on my site http://NowScene.com. It seemed only logical for YouTube which is now becoming the place for artists to get exposure, to incorporate links for people to purchase MP3s. I show a link to Amazon next to every live music video I display. Works pretty well. But because the video title also contains location information. I inform my customers to click the link then remove any extra text from the artist information for better results. But I will make improvements in the future.

    More power to YouTube’s success with this. I certainly believe in the concept since I developed this too. More improvements in the future since this the site is still early stage. But I wanted it documented that I did this first before YouTube made their announcement today.

    -Randy O
    Founder http://NowScene.com

  2. Dotan Cohen said on October 8, 2008 at 10:54 pm
    Reply

    Remember the scandal with Prince having a video of a baby dancing to his music pulled? Now the joke is on who?

    As Cheryl mentions, this will help identify the music in the background. Actually, this is probably a side-effect of them having developed that technology (possibly in response to the whole Prince thing).

  3. Enigma said on October 8, 2008 at 9:54 pm
    Reply

    There doing it with games also.

  4. me said on October 8, 2008 at 6:32 pm
    Reply

    i hope all pages on the internet will block adblock.

  5. skrollan said on October 8, 2008 at 6:10 pm
    Reply

    i hope AdBlock will hide it for me…

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