Meta and the record company Universal Music Group have had a cooperation agreement for years. Both are industry giants in their fields; Meta owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, among others. Universal Music, in turn, is the world's largest music company, which, among other things, sells licenses for songs. This makes it easy for users on Instagram to use music for their posts without having to pay for it.
This contract has now been renewed. As usual, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and others are among the brands that can continue to use Universal Music Group songs. For the first time, WhatsApp is also part of the agreement.
One goal of the collaboration, as Universal writes, is to limit unauthorized music generated by AI. But other options are also conceivable.
This feature is likely to be available soon at WhatsApp
As described, the partnership serves, among other things, to provide music for videos or other posts on Instagram and other platforms. The fact that WhatsApp is included in the partnership for the first time allows for another assumption. Although there are currently no options to access official songs directly via the messenger, this could change with a new function.
For example, it would be possible for status updates that already exist on WhatsApp to be accompanied by music in the future. This would be similar to the model on other platforms and therefore makes sense.
At the same time, however, there has been no indication that Meta is working on a specific function. If that changes, the first features will probably be installed on the devices in a beta version. A number of new functions are visible in the current version.
By Leonard Hennersdorf
