Meta Now Lets Creators Monetize Videos With Popular Music With Music Revenue Sharing

Edition #29

Author

Lindsey Gamble
July 29, 2022

Welcome back! It's been a great few weeks — I got married and honeymooned in Turks and Caicos. After celebrating and taking some time off, I'm ready to dive back into the creator economy. If you’re a new reader, let me know what you’re most interested in learning!

Today’s Edition:

  • Meta allows creators to earn money for videos that include popular music

  • Instagram’s new Map experience brings new discovery elements

  • LinkedIn launches Carousels to help creators share more visual content

Creators Can Now Monetize Facebook Videos With Licensed Music

Through a new Music Revenue Sharing feature, creators can now earn money for Facebook videos with licensed music — something that wasn't possible before.

How It Works

Creators who use music from Meta's Licensed Music library, which includes songs from artists like Post Malone, Tove Lo, and Grupo La Cambia for eligible videos, will receive 20% of the revenue generated from in-stream ads, while music rights holders and Meta will split the remainder.

For videos to be eligible for Music Revenue Sharing, they must meet Facebook’s monetization policies, Community Standards, and music guidelines, be at least 60 seconds long, and feature a visual component. Currently, Reels aren’t eligible.

According to Meta, this is a first-of-its-kind feature within the music industry. Whether that is valid or not, Music Revenue Sharing is a forward-thinking initiative that benefits creators and music rights holders alike.

What It Means For Creators & Music Rights Holders

As sound, specifically music, plays a key role in helping creators make their video content more engaging, creators often will incorporate popular or trending music. However, this can lead to that content being demonetized or being taken down for copyright infringement. Now, creators have the flexibility to add popular and trending songs to their videos with the added benefit of still being eligible for monetization. This results in fewer situations where they must choose whether to use popular music that makes their content more engaging but can't be monetized or to choose royalty-free music that can be monetized, but may not resonate with audiences.

With music rights holders getting money by licensing songs for social media content, they can increase revenue streams and get more exposure when their music is incorporated into videos by creators that may have established audiences and a large reach.

As Reels are not currently part of Music Revenue Sharing, the potential impact of this feature is somewhat limited. Thanks to Meta's all-out push for short-form video, most creators share Reels more often than standard, video-on-demand. If Reels were eligible, more creators and music rights owners would be able to make money from the new revenue share initiative. With how much Meta is in on Reels, it's almost guaranteed that Reels will be included.

The Intersection Between Social Media & Music

Because of the continued intersection between social media content and music, other social media platforms will likely explore similar initiatives that empower creators to use popular music that lets them still take advantage of available monetization tools while compensating musicians when their songs are being used. In the future, I think Meta and other platforms that launch initiatives like this will implement marketplaces to let creators know how much they can make when they use certain songs.

Music companies who demand higher payouts for licensing songs or more equitable deals could pose a challenge. Meta has already faced some of this. Swedish music company, Epidemic Sound, sued them for $142 million, and Kobalt let their deal with Meta expire, resulting in the removal of over 700,000 songs across Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram’s New Map Experience Brings New Discovery Elements For Businesses & Creators

Instagram rolled out a new Instagram Map experience, where users can explore popular locations around them and filter by categories such as Restaurants, Cafes, Sights, Parks & Gardens, Hotels, and Bars. They can access Map by tapping location tags for Feed or Stories or searching for a city or hashtags in Explore.

Each location has its own profile page, which displays top posts, real-time Stories, and Guides tagged with the location. From there, users can save locations to view later and share with their friends via DM.

With Map, Instagram brings new discovery elements for businesses. Enhanced support for locations through curated, user-generated content increases businesses' chances to be discovered in-app. Creators often will tag relevant locations in their content, especially when sharing content shot at businesses like restaurants and cafes. This helps businesses increase their social proof, an incredibly powerful form of marketing and the core of influencer marketing.

It also benefits creators by increasing visibility and reach when their content appears as a Top post or in their Guides on location profiles. Guides, in particular, are notable since up until now, they haven't been that useful for creators. With integration in the search experience now, creators have more reason to invest in sharing Guides.

Map brings new considerations for influencer marketing on Instagram. It encourages more businesses to partner with local influencers so they can get in front of users who are trying to find new places. Also, marketers should ensure their creator partners use location tags for their content to optimize content performance, especially when running geo-targeted campaigns.

The launch comes shortly after Google's Senior Vice President of Knowledge and Information, Prabhakar Raghavan, said that younger people are increasingly turning to Instagram and TikTok for discovery instead of Google Search and Maps due to social media's more immersive experiences.

As Google sees social media platforms as a potential threat to its businesses, look for it to start making its products more immersive by integrating user-generated content.

LinkedIn Announces Carousels For Creators To Share More Visual Content

In a recent announcement, LinkedIn introduced Carousels, a new content format that allows creators to share swipeable photos and videos. Users can swipe through the content at their own pace and have the ability to watch Carousels within their feed or tap to view fullscreen on mobile.

With Carousels, creators can combine text, video, and images to share content in a more visual way. Many creators take to the platform for storytelling, education, and sharing their perspectives on industry news. In doing so, they show that it’s a valuable format for creators to share the type of content they were already sharing, but natively. Previously, to share content in a carousel, creators would do a workaround by uploading multiple PDFs.

Carousels is currently in beta testing with thousands of creators that are part of its LinkedIn For Creators program.

Based on the resources and support LinkedIn is dedicating to Carousels, including a best practices guide, Canva templates, and a private community for feedback, Carousels looks to be more than just a new content format. It will help unlock new ways for creators to share content with the LinkedIn community.

In a way, Carousels feels like LinkedIn’s iteration of a Stories meets short-form video feature. More specifically, it is very similar to Pinterest’s Idea Pins, which were built for creators to share educational, instructional, and how-to content by combining text, photos, videos, and more. But, the biggest difference is that content is swipeable horizontally instead of vertically.

The timing launch of Carousels is notable. It comes just a short time after LinkedIn announced its second U.S. Creator Accelerator Program. This round focuses on Technology & Innovation, which are verticals primed for carousel content. Not to mention, LinkedIn is reporting record levels of engagement, with LinkedIn sessions growing 22% this past fiscal quarter.

Streaming for A Good Cause Just Got Easier With Twitch's New Built-In Fundraising Feature

Twitch launched a new built-in fundraising feature called Twitch Charity that allows creators to set up and run a stream to support a charity. In beta, the feature helps creators track donations, convert subs and Bits into donations, and manage multiple programs and apps at the same time.

Twitch Charity can be accessed from a new Charity section within the Creator Dashboard. Donations from charity streams will be processed by PayPal Giving Fund, Twitch’s selected partner for the initiative, ensuring the accuracy of all donations and handling associated logistics.

Creators now have a more accessible and streamlined way to raise money for causes they care about most, while their fans get more transparency in where the money they donate is going.

Streaming for a good cause is a common practice on Twitch. However, creators always had to handle the logistics through third-party apps that make the process of raising money time-consuming. Now that a native tool exists, creators can launch charity streams in just a few clicks and focus on what they do best — connecting with their fans in-real time.

Instagram Announces Several Updates For Reels Despite User Pushback

Instagram announced several updates for Reels. The most significant change is that all videos under 15 minutes will now be uploaded as Reels. When these videos are under 90 seconds long and public, they will be eligible to be recommended to more people on Instagram. The video and Reels tab will also be consolidated.

Other notable updates are as follows:

  • Expanded Remix Layouts: There is the option to choose from various new remix layouts, including a green screen, horizontal or vertical split-screen, or picture-in-picture reaction view.

  • Add your clip: Instead of having their remix appear at the same time as an original Reel, creators can add their videos after the original video.

  • Templates: By using Templates that include preloaded clips and audio, creators can add their own videos and photos to create Reels.

  • Dual: Creators have a new BeReal-like option to simultaneously record a video and their reaction using their phone’s front and back cameras.

Updates for Reels don’t look like they’ll stop anytime soon as Instagram is investing to make the platform video-heavy. Though these new creative tools further lower the barrier to creating video content, it’s clear that most users still want to post photos and have those photos be shown to their followers.

Although platform head Adam Mosseri is convinced that users want more videos and recommended posts from people they don’t want, responses to his latest video on Instagram’s evolution say otherwise. Right now is an inflection point for Instagram. The moves it makes or doesn’t make over the next few months will greatly impact how creators value it going forward.

Twitch Takes A Community Approach To Moderation With Shared Ban Info

To increase safety for creators, Twitch rolled out Shared Ban Info, enabling them to share a list of users they have banned in their channel with up to 30 other creators.

Creators do this by sending a request to another creator’s channel, and if accepted, both channels will share their list of banned users. Once creators have shared their information, they can choose a default action on how flagged users are handled for their channel — between monitoring or restricted. Those tagged for monitoring can still send messages in the stream chat, but they are flagged for creators and their moderators, while users tagged as restricted will have their messages only visible by creators and moderators.

Through Shared Ban Info, Twitch empowers creators to take a community approach to moderation. It puts the power in hands of creators and their communities to keep their streams positive and safe in a way that works for them. Often facing trolling and harassment, sharing lists of users who may cause trouble between creators makes it easier for creators and their teams to know how to handle these situations.

Creators, particularly those from marginalized groups, have long called on Twitch to provide them with new safety tools, so it’s a move in the right direction for the go-to streaming platform.

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