• by Colin Kirkland , August 12, 2024

In renewing its deal with Universal Music Group (UMG), Meta is extending the licensing agreements to additional social platforms in the tech giant's growing family of apps.

Media content owned by UMG will now be available in new formats on Threads and WhatsApp as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Meta Horizon.

The new agreement stems from a 2017 deal UMG made with Meta, then known as Facebook, which made UMG the first major music company to license its recorded music and music publishing catalogs across Meta's platforms.

The agreement allowed users to upload videos and content using music from UMG on Instagram and Oculus to comply with copyright laws.

Since then, the companies have continued to introduce new ways for Meta to use UMG's licensed content catalog, including virtual-reality experiences, user-generated content, live streaming and other Meta products.

Now, UMG hopes the new agreement will expand monetization opportunities for the label -- as well as for its artists and songwriters -- via new short-form video capabilities as new licensing agreements on WhatsApp and Threads, which have over two billion active users combined.

The companies have remained somewhat vague about the ways in which the expanded partnership will appear for users on WhatsApp and Threads, other than that it will be “multifaceted” and will address the emergent issue of “unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters,” according to a recent statement by UMG.

After ending its short-lived feud with TikTok, Universal Music Group made a similar commitment in May, stating that both companies had agreed to “ensure AI development across the music industry will protect human artistry and the economics that flow to those artists and songwriters” by removing unauthorized AI-generated music from the video-sharing app.

Although it is worth $54 billion and controls a third of the music publishing market, UMG's shares dropped more than 23% in a single day after weaker than expected streaming and subscription revenues for the second quarter disappointed investors.