Warner Music Group Strikes New Multiyear Licensing Deal With Meta

The Warner Music Group (WMG) has struck a new multiyear licensing deal with Meta, Billboard has learned. The partnership, which covers both Warner’s recorded music and Warner Chappell publishing operations, will be across all of Meta’s platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Horizon and Threads — and will also include WhatsApp for the first time, Billboard has confirmed.

In addition to the expanded partnership, the deal will also come with additional promotion and marketing support for Warner’s artists and songwriters and include an agreement involving the two companies working together and continuing discussions around generative AI content on Meta’s platforms.

Reps for both Meta and WMG confirmed the news. “We’re pleased to have renewed our deal with Meta, expanding opportunities for artists and songwriters across all their platforms, and furthering our discussions on the potential of AI,” a spokesperson for WMG tells Billboard.

Meta launched its Meta AI initiative in the past year and claims to have 400 million people using it monthly. Meanwhile, WMG CEO Robert Kyncl and Atlantic artist FKA Twigs testified before the U.S. Senate in April supporting legislation regulating AI deepfakes. Additionally, last November Kyncl laid out WMG’s three-pronged approach to AI on a call with financial analysts, including tracking and licensing generative AI; helping to monitor and monetize generative AI music on digital service provider platforms like Spotify and YouTube; and meeting regularly with politicians and regulators to ensure that the legal framework “respects the creative industries.”

This latest deal between Meta and WMG follows their last renewal, which former WMG CEO Stephen Cooper announced in an August 2022 earnings call, during which he stressed that the new deal involved an “expanded revenue sharing model.” Warner had previously inked deals with Meta/Facebook in 2020 and 2018.