Facebook, the social media giant, is clearly looking to expand its reach in 2018, with a slew of announcements today about new music and sound offerings in the coming months. In addition to rolling out a new video editing feature, the Sound Collection, on Monday, the company also announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
As detailed by Variety, Facebook and Sony/ATV Music Publishing’s agreement will allow artists to earn royalties from the use of their music on Facebook and Instagram. This deal comes on the heels of Facebook’s announcement late last year that it had signed a similar deal with Universal Music Group. With the multi-year deal with Sony/ATV, users of Facebook, Instagram, and Oculus will be able to share and listen to songs from Sony/ATV’s 3-million-song catalog.
The benefit for both companies is clear. In the past, social media users’ use of copyrighted songs and videos have forced Facebook and its subsidiaries to take down posts. As such, the announcement of such deals marks a resolution to the removal of these videos and allow for music licensing companies and artists to be compensated for their music’s use—an issue that the social media company has been working to remediate since 2015. As told by Variety, sources have revealed that Warner Music may be the next music giant to announce a licensing deal with Facebook.
In addition to the licensing agreement with Sony/ATV, today, for many users, Facebook launched a new video editing tool feature called the Sound Collection. As a means to deter users from adding copyrighted music to their videos, the new tool allows users to add high-quality audio that the social media platform has bought the rights to—meaning that music licensing companies like Sony/ATV won’t need to be paid out and videos that use the music aren’t at risk of being taken down for copyright infringement.
Facebook is currently branding its Sound Collection as a music discovery app as well, given that all of the artists on the tool are relatively no-name musicians and composers. As noted by Tech Crunch, “The current crop of artists aren’t well-known. Lyle Workman did an acoustic cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Fortunate Son’ that he recorded for TV show Sons of Anarchy. That’s about as close to popular as Sound Collection’s artists gets right now.”