The social media giant Snapchat has signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment, allowing it to include music from Sony artists in the app’s library of licensed works.
Users typically draw from that music library in order to add background music to their short videos. In recent years, deals with social media networks has become a lucrative revenue source for music publishers.
This deal is particularly important for Snapchat, as it now has signed deals in place with all three major music labels, including Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. As well, Snapchat has other deals in place with smaller but still significant publishers, including MERLIN, Kobalt, NMPA members, Warner Chappell, DistroKid, as well as thousands of indie songwriters and music publishers.
This deal means that Snapchat now has partnerships in place with all three major labels, said Ben Schwerin, Snap’s Senior Vice President of Content and Partnerships.
“Our new deal with Sony Music marks a major milestone as Snap now has partnerships with all the major labels, in addition to networks of independent labels and emerging artists,”Schwerin said. “We’re excited to further integrate Sounds into our AR Lenses to provide artists a proven and powerful way to share their music, and create immersive new experiences for our community.”
The Sounds feature was enabled on Snapchat in October 2020. Already, Snapchat reports that videos created with music from Sounds on the platform have resulted in nearly 1.2 billion videos created and nearly 77 billion views.
As well, more than 200 million users are engaging with the augmented reality (AR) features on its platform every day. Snapchat says it will be expanding the music experience on the app by adding Sounds into its AR Lenses through the app’s ‘Lens Carousel’.
Sony has already worked with Snapchat on music launches for artists on its AR platform, and Dennis Kooker, President, Global Digital Business, Sony Music Entertainment, said the company is excited to see where the partnership will lead.
“We are pleased to be expanding our relationship with Snap to develop new commercial opportunities for our artists around short form video and augmented reality experiences,” said Kooker. “Through this agreement, our artists have more ways to connect with fans and enhance engagement in their music by enabling their songs to be part of the Lens and Sounds tools that support communication and creative expression among Snapchat’s users.”