YouTube has signed an agreement with the PRS to bring back music videos to UK users, while the US arm is busy talking to movie companies about setting up a movie rental business.

UK users of YouTube will get the music back in their lives over the next month or two as tens of thousands of videos are brought back onto the site. These will possibly be joined by the latest movies, if reports from the Wall Street Journal are to be believed.

YouTube UK has been, officially, bereft of copyrighted music since March, when the Google-owned service pulled the videos after failing to reach agreement with PRS For Music. YouTube is now stumping up a lump-sum payment for a licence running from January this year (when the last agreement expired) until 2012.

How much that lump sum is we don’t know, but we do know that YouTube royalties aren’t exactly generous. The NUJ’s Freelance magazine reports that one of the (three) writers of Rick Astley’s “Never Going To Give You Up” received $12 for his share of the 39 million views generated when that song became suddenly popular: not exactly a retirement fund.

The Walkman outsold the iPod in Japan last week for the first time in four years, handing Japanese electronics giant Sony a rare victory over arch-rival Apple, a survey showed.

Sony’s share of the Japanese market for portable music players stood at 43.0 percent in the week to August 30, ahead of Apple which had 42.1 percent, according to the Tokyo-based marketing research company BCN Inc.

Sony has had a tough time in recent years in the face of the huge popularity of the iPod and other rival products such as Nintendo’s Wii.

BCN said Walkman sales were benefiting from an expanded product lineup and more affordable prices.

The iPod has also been a victim of Apple’s own success because some people are buying the iPhone — which doubles as a portable music player — instead. Sales of the iPhone are not included in the survey.

But Sony’s victory was bittersweet because overall sales of portable music players are on the decline in Japan, BCN said.

YouTube is in talks with Hollywood studios to rent new release movies online, according to people familiar with the talks.

The move follows similar deals by Apple Inc.’s iTunes and others.

A final deal would be contingent on pricing and an agreed-upon release date, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions were still ongoing.

The move takes YouTube one step away from an ad-supported business model, but does not break the mold of other online rental deals already struck by iTunes, Amazon.com Inc. and Cinemanow.com, a unit of Sonic Solutions. All of them offer movie rentals for between $1.99 and $3.99 each with a 24-hour viewing period.