Snap, Universal Music Group Ink Deal to Expand Music and Augmented Reality

Snap and Universal Music Group have partnered to expand the music catalogue on the video platform in a multiyear global deal.

With this agreement, Snapchat users will be to use UMG’s entire catalogue of recorded music and content in its Sounds and augmented reality Lenses tools. Recently, the two companies have partnered around new releases with artists including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Benee. Other musicians, from Zedd to Post Malone, have also used the Lens Studio to push their content.

The move builds on Snap’s aim to get closer with the music industry in order to recruit artists, musicians, labels and publishers to promote its platform. It currently has existing partnerships with Warner Music Group, Merlin, Sony Music Publishing, Kobalt Music Group and thousands of individual songwriters and music publishers.

“When entertainment and social media companies work together, fans are able to creatively build close-knit communities around the artists and the music they love, all while ensuring that artists are fairly compensated for the use of their music,” Michael Nash, UMG executive vice president of digital strategy, said

The expanded partnership with UMG also introduces augmented reality music on Snapchat Lenses, which will let artists and creators feature merchandise and include other e-commerce products in their videos. Users will also have access to curated playlists on Snap, focusing on song genres and moods pulled from their music library.

“It’s been exciting to see how quickly Snapchatters have taken to our Sounds creative tool, and in turn the immense impact it has had on the music industry as they discover and share music with their friends and the community,” Ben Schwerin, Snap’s senior vice president of content and partnerships, said in a release.

Snapchat’s Sounds feature was introduced in October, which lets people make videos using music. So far it has amassed 521 million videos created, with 31 billion views overall. Snap has 280 million daily active users and 500 million monthly active users. And people create an average of more than five billion snaps every day, according to the company.

This year, Snap’s stock price surged to an all-time high in February, after projecting 50% annual revenue growth. The company’s share price has now quadrupled in the last year.