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The agreement is part of UMG's effort to strengthen the licensing agreement first signed in 2017 with Meta (formerly Facebook) which brought the label's catalogue across the company's social media platforms that now include Threads.
As part of the new agreement, UMG artists and songwriters will get a cut in advertising revenue from the use of licensed music on Meta creator posts.
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Michael Nash, UMG's Chief Digital Officer and Executive VP, in a statement, said: “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.”
The deal will also see UMG's catalogue becomes the first cache of songs to be accessible for content sharing and usage on WhatsApp. This will see Nigerian artists like Adekunle Gold and Odumodublvck who are signed or affiliated to UMG have their music on available on Whatsapp.
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Universal Music under the leadership of Lucian Grainge has been leading the crackdown against unauthorised use of its music, especially through artificial intelligence that infringes on the rights of its artists.
In 2024, UMG was in a protracted disagreement with TikTok over royalty rate and allegations that the social media platform failed to crack down on the use of Artificial Intelligence.
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The conflict was later resolved in a deal that will see UMG artists and songwriters get paid for using their music and their likeness by artificial intelligence.
