I've been a little jealous lately of my as-yet-unmet colleague/competitor Lyle at Bank Robber Music, a NY based licensing company that's been having fun using some of its music in homemade videos and posting them on its site. There's a tongue in cheek Sex In The City sampling and a quirky little office piece too. Perhaps, if I one day wake up with some untapped video syncing skill and more hard drive space and RAM, I too will do the same.

At around the same time I saw Lyle's videos, I came across an article written last year titled Music Licensing In The Era Of YouTube, in which a company called Dollartracks (apparently now very defunct) offered music for a few dollars to license in, among other things, You Tube videos.

If there's one thing the RIAA has done accidently right in its disastrous attempt to sue music fans out of being music fans, it's inadvertently educated the general music listening population at large that it is illegal to use a Coldplay song in your high school reunion video and upload it to YouTube.

Indeed, I get various requests--mainly from high school science teachers--politely asking permission to use Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" for science project videos, and for whom there's little I can do; EMI grants permission for the master and guiding the honest school teacher through the morass known as clearance is more than I can muster.

Simultaneously, the seemingly increasing discussion of ways to replace music income post-digital file sharing age, which includes variable pricing, merch sales, touring income and public performance royalty-like income from file sharing, tends to omit the licensing side of the business. Mainly, I suspect, because film and TV licensing aren't necessarily consistent bets and also because they're not sold to the general public.

So what better way to sell a single for $5.00 as a YouTube license. And what a good way to get the bonus of exposure and fan endorsement at the same time? Getty, in conjunction with PumpAudio offers music for this purpose but it's only a matter of time when someone does it right, markets it for the YouTube audience and the consumer licensing business will take off.