You don't hear a lot about Google's Click-to-Buy ecommerce platform for YouTube, but on Wednesday, the company said it was expanding the service to eight more countries.
Click-to-Buy exposes YouTube visitors to products for sale, such as songs and DVDs, related to the videos they are watching. "A recent study found that after watching a music video on YouTube, 50% of adult users in the U.K. then go on to purchase music from that artist. And we've seen these results for ourselves - three of the four major music labels are Click-to-Buy partners and are already selling millions of songs a year from these links on YouTube."
Currently available in the US, UK, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, Google rolled out Click-to-Buy links on music videos in 8 additional countries: Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden. Click-to-Buy partners can offer music downloads to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Google has said that over time, it will open up the program to cover many types of content beyond music and has already experimented with links to purchase DVDs and video games.
In related news, Yahoo has opened its music service to other music services, including YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Amazon, Ticketmaster, and iTunes.
Link to announcement
