Facebook in talks with music labels

Social giant Facebook has been in talks with music labels for the past few months, although nobody is quite sure what the company is planning.

Reports say Facebook has met with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, three of the big music licensing labels. Since this doesn’t seem to involve indie labels, we can assume it isn’t a music streaming deal, but instead a licensing and content protection deal.

This would most likely mean Facebook is planning some big changes on its video service, allowing music licensing owners to have more control over video. A system similar to YouTube’s content ID, along with a VEVO channel for each artist, would be the best way to uproot any channels trying to upload music videos for a profit.

Facebook’s video platform has made huge steps in the past two years, going from near nonexistent to over 15 percent of all video watched on the web. The platform still lacks any formatting, however, meaning most videos are viewed on the News Feed by friends liking or sharing; not by subscribing and following the channel.

The issue with Facebook going down YouTube’s route is the social network recently dropped the amount of influence Pages have on the News Feed. The company will either have to re-emphasize Pages and channels or make liked channels more influential.

Facebook has still not revealed plans to anyone outside of the organization, but we should expect a mobile focus and potentially a new application for video channels.

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