Facebook and Warner Music Group inked a licensing agreement earlier this week, having announced that users of the world’s largest social media platform will now be able to add music from Warner’s artists to their videos, whereas Facebook will pay royalties to musicians based on how popular their creations are. The development marks the third major licensing agreement Facebook reached in recent months, with the company now also having separate deals with Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Universal Music Group. Besides the firm’s flagship social network, the agreement with Warner also covers Instagram, Messenger, and all virtual reality products from Oculus.
Warner’s music label represents superstar artists like Ed Sheeran, Jason Derulo, Madonna, and Cher, as well as groups such as Linkin Park, Metallica, and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The agreement will allow Facebook’s users to post clips featuring Warner’s licensed music without having it taken down. The collaboration is also expected to extend to Facebook’s future products, including the company’s screen-equipped smart speakers that numerous industry sources previously claimed will be launched this summer. The Internet-enabled devices will reportedly place a large focus on entertainment and are expected to be used for promoting Facebook’s Watch platform that the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant has been positioning as a YouTube rival for some time now. The agreement with Warner still isn’t expected to directly impact original programming produced for Watch as the New York City-based music label wouldn’t have an incentive to allow its copyrighted creations be used for commercial purposes on such a scale, some industry watchers believe.
Facebook is presently in the process of rethinking its overall platform and has been moving its focus away from news in recent months as it’s still struggling to recover from various controversies related to its self-admitted inability to identify and prevent global misinformation campaigns ran on its network in a timely manner. The company is still on the path of record growth, having generated $40.65 billion in revenue in 2017, up from $26.89 billion posted a year earlier.