Social media networks featuring short-form video continue to drive music licensing deals, with Universal Music Group announcing this week a licensing deal with Singapore-based TikTok rival Lomotif.
Lomotif is a social networking platform with the mission of democratizing video creation. The company was co-founded by video enthusiast Paul Yang in 2014, and has been granted three technology patents uniquely focused on empowering creators to share and watch short videos with ease through remix and collaboration. The Lomotif app is available in the Apple and Google stores, and Lomotif is one of five partners selected by Snapchat for a bi-directional integration for posting stories between the two platforms.
While not as large as TikTok, Lomotif has been downloaded more than 225 million times, and has 31 million monthly active users, watching an average of more than 300 million videos a month.
With this agreement, UMG becomes the first major music company to globally license Lomotif. This deal is one of several that the major music group signed with social media platforms this year. UMG announced that it had struck a global licensing deal with TikTok in February and in June the music company inked a global deal with Snap Inc. (Snapchat) spanning recorded music and augmented reality experiences.
Michael Nash, UMG’s Executive Vice President of Digital Strategy, said, “We are very pleased that Lomotif’s fast-growing community of users around the world will be able to take inspiration from the artists and music they love, all while ensuring UMG’s artists are fairly compensated for the value music generates on Lomotif’s platform. UMG continues to broaden the creative and commercial opportunities for our artists by licensing an ever-expanding array of new digital platforms and supporting emerging entrepreneurs. We look forward to working with Lomotif to help unlock even more innovative music-based features for their community.”
Lomotif’s founder and CEO Paul Yang said the deal is another critical step in Lomotif’s growth. “Our deal with Universal Music Group will continue to grow users and increase engagement within our platform, a destination for emerging artists, and will significantly expand the types of music our community can utilize, collaborate with and share,” said Yang. “With nearly 800 million videos created to date, we are heading in a great direction as a platform and making high-value content, functionality and features available to our community will only help us grow exponentially.”
Yang also revealed that Lomotif will change its name to LoMo. According to a press release, the company stated that LoMo “will be rebranded and re-positioned in a new North American marketing campaign.”
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