YouTube has reached a licensing agreement with the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the Associated Press reports.The MCPS-PRS Alliance is a body responsible for the collection of royalties for UK musical artists and represents 50,000 musical performers, composers and publishers.
Under the agreement between the Google-owned video sharing site and the alliance, millions of musical pieces will be licensed to the British version of YouTube.
MCPS-PRS Alliance's managing director Andrew Shaw said that the video sharing site is in a different position from other broadcasters as it does not have complete awareness concerning the content it stores.
He added, however, that YouTube has arranged to explore and implement technology to search for music on the site.
He commented: "We do have an agreement from them to put in place various technologies that will allow them to identify music that is being used, to report that back and to make appropriate distribution payments."
Earlier this month, the National Musical Publishers' Association in the US joined a case to sue YouTube after claiming that songwriters were not being sufficiently compensated for their music appearing on the site.
Other companies suing the search engine's video sharing service include Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures.
According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, while the four major US record labels have reached agreements with the site, most music publishers have not.
Google took over YouTube in a stock-for-stock transaction in October last year.
