DistroKid offering Snapchat licensing to artists

The deal will allow artists who own their own recordings and publishing rights to license them for use on Snapchat. The artists will have to prove that they control all the rights before they can distribute to the platform.

“With DistroKid, independent artists everywhere now have an easy way to get their music into Snapchat,” DistroKid founder Philip Kaplan said. “We’re excited to partner with Snapchat, and introduce millions of new tracks to millions of Snapchat users.”

Snap Inc’s global head of music partnerships, Ted Suh, said: “We’re thrilled to partner with DistroKid to integrate their artists into our new music-based Creative Tools, such as Sounds and AR Lenses and see the significant impact it has for music creators and the industry. It’s been exciting to see Snapchatters use our camera to discover and engage with new music in their conversations with real friends.”

Snap says this is the first time a platform like DistroKid is allowing its artists to grant master and composition rights for distribution to a platform such as itself. The social platform claims it has 265 million daily active users.

The partnership follows Snapchat’s launch of music-based creative tools in October last year. The company also previously announced deals with a number of major and independent labels and publishers, including Warner Music Group, Merlin, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music and Kobalt, among others.

Snapchat says some artists have gained success using its music tools. The platform provided the example of ‘Hoops’, a song by emerging artist Wolf that was added to Snapchat Sounds in January 2021. More than 3.5 million videos were created using the song within the month. The videos had also garnered about 148 million views in the same time period.

“The way Snapchat has come in to support me is unreal,” Wolf said. “When they featured ’Hoops’ we were all taken aback by the immediate increase in streams and shazams we saw. And seeing people react so positively to the music felt like a dream. Right around that time we also got hit up by a top-40 radio station asking to play the song as well.”

In June last year, Snapchat partnered with music audio and distribution platform SoundCloud, which made Snapchat an alternative destination for SoundCloud users who want to discover and promote new music.