If you have been wanting to spice up your Snapchat posts with official, licensed music, that day may be coming soon. Snap, Inc., has to work out negotiations with the big record labels to make that happen, but a new report suggests the company is doing just that.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Snap is currently undergoing negotiations with the biggest record labels in an effort to secure music licensing. The goal is to let users add that licensed music to their Snapchat posts, offering a bit more customization and spark to the aging social network built around ephemeral messaging. Snap is reportedly speaking with Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME), and Warner Music Group (WMG).
This is a big move, but mostly because this would bring Snapchat in line with its primary competitors. Facebook’s Instagram added the ability to share music in Stories back in 2018. And TikTok has made a name for itself already as a major competitor to Snapchat, which also allows folks to add music to their posts.
Snap Inc. is in talks with major record labels to expand the ways users can include music in posts on its flagship Snapchat app, according to people familiar with the matter, as the company faces competitive pressure from Facebook Inc.’s Instagram and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok.
This deal that Snap is working out with the three major labels would make it possible to embed those licensed songs into Snapchat posts. But it’s not like Snap is completely out of the music game entirely. Snapchat is already associated with Pandora and Shazam. With the Pandora partnership, Snapchat users that are also Pandora Premium customers can share their favorite songs and artists via the social network. Snapchat users can also use their camera to identify a song that’s playing thanks to the deal with Shazam.
Snapchat is one of the most popular social networks out there, so this kind of deal for licensed music would probably be a welcomed addition for users. If anything, it gives Snapchat feature parity to its primary competition out there in the wild.
In related Snapchat news, it’s not so positive. We recently reported that past Snap employees were able to utilize standard Snapchat tools to spy on users for quite some time. Snap has since cracked down on that, thankfully.