Facebook Announces Yet Another Music Licensing Deal

Following the music-licensing deals with several big music publishers in the last few months, Facebook has announced yet another – this time with rights management organisation ICE Services.

Since December, Facebook has announced five big music-licensing deals with some of the most important music publishers in the world, bringing the ability for Facebook users to use tens of millions of music tracks on the platform, without retribution from the copyright holders. The first deal with Universal Music Group was announced in December, and similar deals with other publishers like Global Music Rights, HFA/Rumblefish, Kobalt Music Publishing and Sony/ATV followed soon after.

Since December, Facebook has announced five big music-licensing deals with some of the most important music publishers in the world. Here comes another.

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The deal with online licensing processing provider, ICE Services, brings Facebook’s first multi-territorial music license, this time covering nearly 300,000 music rights holders in 160 countries. Similar to the previous deals, the latest covers licensing across all of Facebook’s properties – Facebook itself, Messenger, Instagram and, of course, Oculus.

ICE Services is an organisation created by PRS for Music (covering the UK and global markets), STIM (a Swedish collective management organisation) and GEMA (a German rights management organisation), to “encourage collaboration between collective management organizations, music publishers and digital service providers to ensure that composers and songwriters are compensated accurately and fairly for the use of their works.” The deal with Facebook will build upon creating better royalties data, and compensating artists whose work is used on the platform.

The deal with online licensing processing provider, ICE Services, brings Facebook’s first multi-territorial music license, this time covering nearly 300,000 music rights holders.

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ICE has already licensed over 40 online music streaming services to use its catalog, and says it has given over €300 million to rights holders in the last two years.