Not sure you have enough places to buy music online? YouTube jumped into the retail space by adding links to select content that will let users purchase music, games, and more via Amazon's MP3 store and iTunes.
Google started rolling out the YouTube eCommerce Platform in the United States Wednesday. It will expand internationally in the next few months.
"Our goal is to improve the overall YouTube experience by connecting consumers with relevant information and entertaining content," Chad Hurley, co-founder and chief executive of YouTube, said in a statement. "The addition of retail links will enhance the viewing experience and allow people to engage more deeply with the content they want to consume."
Starting today, YouTube will place embedded download links to Amazon and iTunes on the pages housing "authorized video content," meaning music videos and other content provided by the content providers themselves.
At this point, the platform will provide download links to content from EMI Music and Electronic Arts, though partners who use YouTube's content identification and management system can also enable retail links on claimed videos that they choose to leave up on the site, Google said.
"Amazon.com is always looking for new ways to make discovering and buying products as convenient as possible for our customers, which is why we're excited to collaborate with YouTube," Scott Merlino, senior manager of the Amazon Associates Program, said in a statement.
"This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable eCommerce platform for users and partners on YouTube," according to a YouTube blog post. "Our vision is to help partners across all industries -- from music, to film, to print, to TV -- offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos."
