Source: Snap is in talks to license catalogs of Sony Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music, which will allow Snapchat users to include songs in their posts
Snap wants to up Snapchat's music game. — The company has been in negotiations with music companies including the big three …
Context & Ripple Effects
This report opens a two-year arc: Snap's 2019 negotiations with the big three labels were the first step toward making music a native part of Snapchat. The company followed up by building a TikTok-style Snaps-to-music feature, then shipped a curated song catalog for iOS users in October 2020.
The endgame arrived in June 2021, when Snap and Universal Music signed a licensing deal letting users share songs in messages and posts — confirming that at least one of the three negotiations reported here closed on commercial terms. The story matters because it shows a social platform paying for full-label catalogs rather than settling for a thin curated library.
First-order effects
- If the talks conclude, Snapchat users gain the ability to include licensed songs from Sony, Universal, and Warner catalogs directly in posts, replacing the limited curated clips of the 2020 iOS rollout.
- The three major labels add Snap as a direct licensing customer, opening a new revenue line from short-form social content alongside streaming.
Second-order effects
- Rival social platforms face rising expectations that music sharing is a licensed, built-in feature — TikTok's music-first format, which Snap explicitly modeled its feature on, sets the competitive bar.
- Labels gain leverage in parallel negotiations with other platforms, since each new social licensee demonstrates that catalog access is a paid product rather than promotional giveaway.
Third-order effects
- Major-label catalogs are consolidating into licensable infrastructure across an expanding set of uses — social posts today, and per the broader pattern around Universal and Warner's reported AI licensing pursuits, AI training and generation tomorrow.
- Social platforms increasingly compete on licensed content libraries as much as on camera tools, shifting bargaining power toward whoever controls the music rights.
The trend: Social platforms are striking direct licenses with the major labels to make music a default ingredient of user content, turning label catalogs into recurring-fee infrastructure.