Google sets up Youtube to flog artists' mechandise

VIDEO STREAMING OUTFIT Youtube has announced it will offer artists the capability to sell merchandise through its web site.

Google's Youtube, which is commonly used to view music videos, is now seemingly taking on Myspace by appealing to artists and enabling them to flog merchandise through the web site. The Youtube Merch Store will showcase wares from the firm's partners on artists' Youtube channels.

Youtube quoted its audience figures to try to whet artists' appetites by saying, "With 800 million people per month coming to YouTube, you have a pretty big stage to share your music, and now we're adding features to also make YouTube your box office, merchandise table and music store."

So far Youtube has said that there will be the typical music related merchandise such as T-shirts, concert tickets and links to Amazon and Apple's Itunes for music downloads. Interestingly it didn't mention anything about Google's own music store, which is rumoured to be not so far away.

Although Youtube is one of the biggest brands on the web, considering those 800 million people a month and even Google's traditional rivals using it to promote their own videos, Google makes a relatively low $1bn a year from advertising on Youtube. It hasn't yet said what sort of profit it will extract from each sale but will release more details before the global launch, which the firm said will happen in the coming weeks. µ