Snap adds Sony Music to its library; creates new AR Music lenses

Snap announced a new deal with Sony Music Entertainment to include their artists’ music into Snap’s library of licensed music.

 Snapchat is helping change the way Gen Z listens to and discovers new music. They are enabling real friends to recommend and share music and entertaining video content together, and making it even easier for Snapchatters to express themselves with Sounds.

 Additional music partners include Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group,  MERLIN Members, Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell, Kobalt, BMG, NMPA members, DistroKid and thousands of individual songwriters / music publishers.

With over 200 million Snapchatters engaging with augmented reality every day, we know they love using our Lenses to express themselves. So we’re expanding the music experience on Snapchat by adding Sounds into our AR Lenses available in the Lens Carousel and experimenting with new formats.

 Rolling out soon, we’ll feature Sound Lenses with a pre-selected song embedded into the Lens, a Lens that transforms pictures of anyone to appear as if they are singing a song, and Cameo Sound Lenses that apply visual effects to put you and a friend as the stars of your own animated music video. To find Lenses with Sounds, look for Lenses that  have a musical note icon on the Lens icon.

These new Sound Lenses will make for a more immersive music experience, and open a proven and powerful way for artists to share music on Snapchat.

 Sony Music has leveraged Snap’s powerful AR capabilities over the past few years to share new music with Snapchatters around the globe, and those experiences have had incredible reach. 

 For example, Snap and Sony Music partnered on an AR Lens to support the launch of Kygo’s collaboration with Whitney Houston for her unreleased version of “Higher Love”. In three days, this limited release Lens resulted in over 16 million Snaps creations, and it received over 55 million views.

 Other partnered Lenses with Sony Music artists include Calvin Harris and Rag’n’Bone Man’s  “Giant”, which resulted in 90 million creations and 1 billion views; and G-Eazy and Halsey’s “Him and I”, which resulted in 61 million creations and 750 million views.

 Since launching the Sounds tool last year, videos created with music from Sounds on Snapchat have collectively resulted in nearly 1.2 billion videos created and nearly 77 billion views. There is tremendous value in friend-to-friend music recommendation and nearly 40% of all videos created with music from Sounds were shared directly with friends via chat.

When your friend sends you a Snap with music, you can learn more about the music by swiping up. A “Play This Song” link will also open a webview to Linkfire so you can listen to the full song on your favorite streaming platform (like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music).

 Sony Music Entertainment President Global Digital Business Dennis Kooker said: “We are pleased to be expanding our relationship with Snap to develop new commercial opportunities for our artists around short form video and augmented reality experiences. Through this agreement, our artists have more ways to connect with fans and enhance engagement in their music by enabling their songs to be part of the Lens and Sounds tools that support communication and creative expression among Snapchat’s users.”

“Our new deal with Sony Music marks a major milestone as Snap now has partnerships with all the major labels, in addition to networks of independent labels and emerging artists,” said Ben Schwerin, Snap’s Senior Vice President of Content and Partnerships. “We’re excited to further integrate Sounds into our AR Lenses to provide artists a proven and powerful way to share their music, and create immersive new experiences for our community.”