SNAP Expands Sounds Library With New Music Licensing Deals

SNAP signs multiple licensing deals with music labels to expand its Sounds library, the social app's product that lets users use song clips in Snaps and Stories. Read More...

Snap Inc. SNAP owned Snapchat has announced that it is adding more music to its Sounds library, as it looks to tap into the popularity of audio elements, which have seen a big rise on the back of the TikTok shift.

Snapchat has made new music licensing deals with some of the known music labels from different countries, making more music accessible for its users from all around the world. Local artists and their music will be added to Snapchat Sounds library used by over 375 million daily active users.

The library will offer more licensed music for users to embed into their Snaps, Stories, messages and such. New deals include partnerships with UnitedMasters in the United States, BUMA/STEMRA in the Netherlands, SUISA Digital Licensing AG and its subsidiaries across the world and other unidentified direct-licensing music publishers.

Emerging artists working with UnitedMasters will be eligible for grants through the Sounds Creator Fund. Snap started this program last year in partnership with DistroKit to award up to $100,000 per month or $5,000 to 20 songs per month to upcoming musicians.

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Snap’s Rivalry With TikTok Intensifies

Snapchat originally launched its Sounds library in 2020 and steadily expanded its music options ever since, through a range of publisher partnerships.

Sounds operates in much the same way that TikTok allows users and musical artists to upload their own audio or songs to the platform for use in TikToks. The major difference between Snapchat and TikTok’s audio features is that all of Snapchat’s audio that contains music or clips from TV and movies is officially licensed unlike TikTok.

Sounds has solid deals with some of the well-known music labels in the industry. Snap now has music licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Music Group WMG, Warner Chappell, Kobalt, DistroKid, BMG, NMPA publisher members, Merlin, Empire Distribution and more than 9000 independent music publishers and labels.

Snap has also added new audio sync and Lens-matching audio options to provide more sound-on capacity and more ways to incorporate audio elements into your Snap creations. Snapchat has also added expanded audio options, like audio clips from popular TV shows such as SNL and The Office, and movies like Shrek and Despicable Me, through its partnership with Comcast CMCSA owned NBCUniversal.

Further, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company’s partnership with Spotify SPOT enables Snapchatters to open Spotify’s AR Portal Lens in world view to experience music artists including Orly Anan, Cristina Martinez, Luisa Salas, Pedro Nekoi and D’Ana Nunez.

Last Month, Spotify introduced a significant redesign of its app, which capitalizes on its investments in personalization technology while also adopting a similar short-form video feed as the one customized by TikTok. In the updated Spotify mobile app, users and subscribers will gain access to a handful of new features, including the vertically scrolling discovery feeds, a new Smart Shuffle mode for playlist recommendations, a new podcast autoplay feature and more.

With Snap’s young audience, it is an important element for the app to consider making expansion of its music options, which could drive more discovery and engagement. The company stated that Snapchat reaches 75% of 13-34-year olds in the United States, making it a larger platform than Facebook, Instagram and Twitter among this demography.

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