A user can find pre-cleared music for YouTube on the site, then purchase an mp3, and use it in videos.

In a post on the Official YouTube Blog, the company says:

According to YouTube, once a user buys a cleared song from the site, it is licensed for unlimited views. Unfortunately the selection is quite limited. Hopefully that will change in the future.

There was a bit of controversy over this when it first started appearing because it did not appear and disappear the way it does now. It was just simply there. "The search bar was part of the YouTube skin, so users could remove it programmatically," explains Rick Turoczy at ReadWriteWeb, who also points to the dismay of users on Twitter. "But for people with multiple embedded YouTube videos, that meant a lot of editing."

YouTube quickly acted on that dismay and made the feature function as it now does, which is much less intrusive, and actually quite useful. They recently added the search bar to the end of embedded videos, but now, you can search for a different video when you determine the one you’re watching isn’t actually what you want to see.

The other piece of YouTube news is that they have formed a partnership with Rumblefish, "the sonic branding and music licensing agency," and will give YouTube users access to thousands of licensed songs that they can use to put music over their videos. The Rumblefish tunes will be part of YouTube’s AudeioSwap tool that lets you do just that.

How Do You Use AudioSwap Anyway?

YouTube explains just how to do so:

While logged-in, either click on the “Try AudioSwap” button below or go to “My Videos” and click on the AudioSwap button below each one of your videos. Then browse our library to find a song. Once you’ve selected a song, click on the "Preview" button to preview your video with the selected track. If you’re satisfied with your new video, click on the "Publish" button below to finalize its transformation. To learn more about AudioSwap, check out the Help Center.

Please Note: When you add a new soundtrack, the audio track on your video will be permanently replaced. You can replace the audio track as many times as you like; however, once it has been replaced you cannot get the previous version back. You may want to upload a few videos to experiment with.

YouTube also provides a nice before-and-after example of a video utilizing AudioSwap (actually with Rumblefish-provided music) at the blog post announcing the partnership. Head over there to see it in effect.