Warner Music pulls its content from YouTube

After a two-year relationship, major label Warner Music Group has moved to temporarily terminate its partnership with video sharing site YouTube.

A statement from the record company said, "We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide."

According to the YouTube Team, "Sometimes, if we can't reach acceptable business terms, we must part ways with successful partners. For example, you may notice videos that contain music owned by Warner Music Group being blocked from the site. Don't worry - if you receive a takedown notification, you will have a couple of options to choose from in order to keep your original video creations up."

In Warner's fourth quarter earnings call at the end of November, the company reported a four percent decline in revenue for fiscal year 2008, while its digital revenue increased to 20% of the company's total. Approximately 65% of WMG's digital revenue is generated in the United States.

Recent comScore figures show that YouTube is not simply a video site any more, but it handles more search queries than both Yahoo and MSN/Windows Live Search. In November, Yahoo received 2.6 billion search queries, and Microsoft's sites received 1.05 billion.

Youtube received 2.8 billion queries in November, and figures from Nielsen Online's VideoCensus show that the site had 82 million unique viewers in October, streaming 5.08 billion videos. Traffic on the Google-owned video site is soaring, but a Warner Music source has been quoted as calling the payouts "staggeringly low" despite such heavy traffic.