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YouTube adds click-to-buy links on videos
Purchase songs at the press of a button

By Jennifer Guevin

Published: Thursday 09 October 2008

Google, which owns the video-sharing site YouTube, is adding "click to buy" links to thousands of video pages of YouTube partners, the company announced on its corporate blog Tuesday afternoon.

The idea is to make it easy for people to buy an MP3 or video game with the click of a mouse. The links appear just below the toolbox underneath a video, and link directly to the Amazon MP3 page or iTunes Store where people can buy the song. For video game trailers, YouTube will add links to buy the game from Amazon.

For those not interested in buying, the links will at least allow people to find out the name of an artist and title of a song playing as the soundtrack of a video they're watching.

For now, the service is only available to US users and the only music company specifically mentioned in the announcement was EMI. But Google said this is just the beginning of a much larger project that is likely to expand to include many more content partners and serve an international audience.