News 

YouTube has agreed a flat fee with the MCPS-PRS Alliance in exchange for licensing the library of music it represents. The Alliance is responsible for collecting royalties on behalf of 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers and represents the creators of more than 10 million pieces of music.

The licensing organisation is working with YouTube on how to identify the high-profile songs that are most often used as background in both professional and user-generated videos posted to the site. The alliance will then decide how to distribute the revenues to its members based on an estimate of what music has been played on the site.

Terms of the deal or the flat fee were not disclosed, though a YouTube spokesman confirmed the agreement.

The deal is a boost for YouTube which has been fending off challenges by major media companies who say the site is a haven for piracy of their copyrighted works.