Image: Sergei Konkov / AOP

The world's largest online video service, YouTube, took down a big chunk of the Finnish music hosted on the platform on Thursday morning after an agreement on licensing ran out.

The organisation responsible for administering copyright in the Finnish music industry, Teosto, said that a new, temporary contract was agreed on Thursday morning—but it could be days before all the videos are back up.

On Thursday morning users located in Finland who tried to view videos of many recording artists were greeted with a message that the content was owned by Teosto, and therefore 'not available in your country'.

Teosto told Yle on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Google, which owns YouTube, and that the blocking of content was at Google's own initiative.

"Contract negotiations between Teosto and Google have been conducted in good faith," said Teosto's deputy managing director, Risto Salminen.

Teosto represents some 30,000 recording artists and grants licenses to use their content. Negotiations with media services determine the rules around use of the content and any compensation for that usage.

Iltalehti was the first to report the video removals.