Facebook signed new licensing deals with Sacem, Socan and Wixen

Facebook signed new licensing deals with Sacem, Socan and Wixen

Facebook’s going on with its music-licensing efforts. The company just announced three more deals in this field: with French collecting society Sacem, Canadian PRO Socan and music publisher Wixen Music Publishing.

These are licensing agreements covering user-generated content across Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Oculus VR. In particular, the inclusion of Wixen is interesting, given that publisher’s recent history. On 29 December it filed a lawsuit against Spotify claiming that thousands of its songs were being used without a licence, seeking damages of $1.6bn.

As Music Ally explained, Wixen’s lawsuit is at the heart of debates over the proposed Music Modernization Act in the US, which included a clause ruling out any legal claims for unpaid mechanical royalties if they weren’t filed before 1 January 2018. While the ramifications from that lawsuit continue to rumble in the background, it seems sensible, to say the least, that Facebook has made Wixen a priority in its licensing moves.