Universal Music Group has announced a new deal with Meta to update its licensing agreement with the platform. It will allow Meta to use music in more ways on its apps.
Meta had already established an industry-first licensing deal with Universal Music Group back in 2017. This allowed them to build various products around music on their platforms including music stickers.
Now, the company is looking to leverage new music from UMG to make its apps better than the competition.
Here is what UMG said in a statement.
“Meta and Universal Music Group (UMG) today announced an expanded global, multi-year agreement that will further evolve the creative and commercial opportunities for UMG artists and Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) songwriters across Meta’s global network of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Horizon, Threads and, for the first time, WhatsApp. The new agreement reflects the two companies’ shared commitment to protecting human creators and artistry, including ensuring that artists and songwriters are compensated fairly.”
A key part of the new deal is a provision to regulate the unauthorized AI-generated content that could impact singers and songwriters.
“We are delighted that Meta shares our artist-centric vision for respecting human creativity and compensating artists and songwriters fairly. We look forward to continuing to work together to address unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters, so that UMG can continue to protect their rights both now and in the future.”
Ever since the inception of AI, this has become the key focus for most IP holders and managers. All this because of the new tools being developed to replicate artists’ work in a fraction of a second.
This is precisely the reason why most platforms have stopped working on AI deep fakes of musicians.
