Music is a bonding force in normal times. During difficult and isolating times like this, we know it can be even more essential. More people have turned to Instagram and Facebook Live to stay connected with their communities in this quarantine. This rapid rise in usage has made tons of good during this crisis. They are increasing money for frontline workers and underserved communities, improve awareness of healthy habits, encouraging people to keep safe by staying home, and bringing people together via new forms of entertainment. But it also shows you some confusion across the community — especially around the use of music in Live on both Facebook and Instagram.
At its core, Live brings people together in a real-time and unproduced way, which has opened up new great opportunities for many creators, artists, and other public figures.
So as Instagram keeps building for the long term, here are the guidelines and product improvements for including music in a video on Instagram, Facebook videos, and live streams.
Clarifying Our Guidelines for Including Music in Video
Instagram allows people to show their musical expression on these social media platforms while also making sure that they uphold their agreements with rights holders. These agreements help protect the artists, songwriters, and partners who are the cornerstone of the music community. Instagram is grateful for how they’ve enabled the amazing creativity they’ve seen in this time.
Instagram’s partnerships with rights holders have brought people together around music on these social media platforms. As part of their licensing agreements, there are limitations around the number of tracks that can be added in Live broadcasts or videos. While the specifics of their licensing agreements are confidential, today we’re exploring some general guidelines from Instagram to help you create your videos better:
- Music in stories and traditional live music performances such as filming an artist or band performing live are permitted.
- The higher the number of full-length recorded music in a video, the more likely it may be limited.
- For that reason, we recommend shorter clips of music.
- There should always be a visual component to your video; recorded audio should not be the primary target of the video.
These guidelines are consistent across life and recorded video on both Facebook and Instagram, and for all types of accounts. For example, some types of accounts are pages, profiles, verified, and unverified accounts. Music is now available on our platforms in more than 90 countries. However, there are places where you can not use this feature at that moment. So if your video includes recorded music, you can not use it in those locations.
People also have to access a library of custom music and sound effects at no cost using Facebook’s Sound Collection. The Sound Collection includes thousands of tracks to use in the videos you share on Facebook and Instagram without any limits. Some panning genres like hip-hop, pop, jazz, country, and more.
In-Product Video Notifications
Instagram knows it can be frustrating to have a stream interrupted or to have parts of your video muted because it includes music. To minimize these interruptions and to prevent confusion around audio use, they’re also improving our in-product notifications. Instagram gives you notifications to alert when the systems detect that your broadcast or uploaded video may include music. You may use music in a way that doesn’t adhere to their licensing agreements.
Updates include making notifications clearer and surfacing notifications earlier to live broadcasters. It allows people to adjust their streams and avoid interruptions if Instagram detects they may be approaching their limitations. If your video is muted or blocked, they’ll guide you with what actions you can take to stop the interruption.
Looking to The Future
With these improvements, Instagram looks forward to people, artists, and creators continuing to use music. People can use music to share and bond with each other across their platforms.
Instagram will keep working hand-in-hand with their music partners to enable people to build a community with music in new ways. And especially during this time, they are working together to maximize people’s ability to express themselves through our products.