If you’re looking for a way to legally distribute your music online via YouTube, your task may have just gotten a little easier today. In a blog post, YouTube announced that it has acquired the company RightsFlow, a New York-based company that assists songwriters, record labels, and other music making-types to manage the rights to their music.

YouTube, which is one of many services operating under the Google umbrella, can already claim a fairly efficient commitment to ensuring fair compensation for the works of musicians and performers who have shared their creations on the video site. They’ve made pretty long strides toward preserving the integrity of copyrights with their investments in platforms such as their Content Verification Program, a program that enables rights holders to submit multiple requests for the removal of any rights-infringing content. Content ID is another tool YouTube has provided rights holders that allows them to identify user-uploaded videos that violate their copyright and what course of action they would prefer to take whenever an unlawful video is discovered (block them, monetize the infraction, etc.). More details can be found in the video YouTube provided that demonstrates how Contend ID works:

RightsFlow has operated as a licensing and royalty service provider since its launch in 2007. The company has prioritized the mission of making the licensing process as easy as possible for everyone involved in the production and distribution of music. Patrick Sullivan, President and CEO of RightsFlow, celebrates the acquisition in an official release:

We’re pleased to now be taking a momentous step with the team at YouTube, that shares in our vision of solving the really challenging problem of copyright management. Combined with the worldwide platform and reach of YouTube, we’ll now be able to drive awareness, adoption, and licensing success to a much larger audience — ultimately benefiting users, artists, labels, songwriters, publishers, and the entire global music ecosystem.

Both YouTube and RightsFlow anticipate that the merger will simplify the process of sharing licensed music on YouTube as well as producing a greater profit for the people involved in creating the music and video.