Snapchat is helping to change the way Gen Z hears and discovers new music. The ability to recommend and share music with friends as well as enjoying video content together has been enabled, making it even easier for Snapchatters to express themselves via Sounds.
Today the new agreement signed with Sony Music Entertainment thanks to which the Snap library will be filled with the music of the artists of the record company. Snapchat has other music partners including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, MERLIN Members, Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell, Kobalt, BMG, NMPA members, DistroKid, and thousands of independent music artists and producers.
Not only do over 200 million users use the app’s augmented reality capabilities every day, but Snapchatters love using Lenses to express themselves. This is why Snap decided to expand the music experience by adding sounds in the AR Lenses available in the carousel, as well as experimenting with new formats.
The “Sonic lenses“Which include a pre-selected song directly integrated into the Lens – a Lens capable of transforming a photo making it seem that the protagonists of the shot are singing a song – and the Cameo Sound Lenses which, through the application of visual effects, will make users the protagonists of animated music videos. To be recognizable, the Sonic Lenses will have a note symbol on the Lens icon.
This new type of Lenses will ensure an even more immersive musical experience and will offer artists a powerful new channel for sharing their music.
Sony Music has benefited from Snap’s innovative AR capabilities over the past few years to share new music with users around the world, and these actions have seen incredible results in terms of reach.
For example, Snap and Sony Music have collaborated on the development of an AR Lens to support the launch of Kygo’s collaboration with Whitney Houston on the unreleased version of “Higher Love”. In three days, this limited edition Lens generated 16 million Snaps and 55 million views.
Other Lenses made in partnership with Sony Music artists were that of Calvin Harris and Rag’n’Bone Man for “Giant”, which recorded 90 million snaps and 1 billion views, and that of G-Eazy and Halsey for “Him and I” (61 million snaps and 750 million views).
Since the announcement of the “Sounds” feature last year, the videos created with Sound’s music on Snapchat have been, to date, 1.2 billion for a total of approximately 77 billion views. Music shared between friends takes on a very important value and about 40% of all videos created with music coming from Sound were shared via chat.
When you receive a Snap with music, you can have all the information about the song by simply swiping up. This will open a link to open a Linkfire web-view to listen to the entire song by selecting your preferred streaming platform (Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music).
Dennis Kooker, President, Global Digital Business, Sony Music Entertainment, said: “We are proud to be able to further expand our partnership with Snap to develop new business opportunities for our artists related to short-form video and augmented reality experiences. Through this partnership our artists will have more opportunities to connect with their fans and increase the level of involvement of their music by making their songs available within the Lenses or dedicated Sound tools that support communication and expressive creativity among Snapchatters ” .
“This new collaboration with Sony Music represents an important moment in Snap’s history as the platform can now count on partnerships with all the major record labels. We are extremely excited to further integrate the “Sounds” functionality within our AR Lenses to offer artists a powerful and proven tool to share their music and create new immersive experiences for our community, “he added. Schwerin, Snap’s Senior Vice President of Content and Partnerships Snapchat.