to be added to Instagram and Facebook ‘Stories’ , in addition to the launch of Lip Sync Live – a tool which allows Facebook users to lip sync along to their favorite tracks, and share the video result. (Initially, Lip Sync Live seemed like a natural rival to Musical.ly, the karaoke platform acquired by Bytedance for $800m in 2017 which would go on to fuel the phenom now known as TikTok.) These features haven’t gone unnoticed by artists keen to take advantage of Facebook’s tech. In August, for single Pieces Of Us, Mark Ronson released the song’s official music video on his Instagram Story. Dubbed ‘the future of music videos’ the production was purposefully made for Stories using real-time AR effects, and was periodically reposted in consecutive 24-hour cycles, each offering the viewer a different kind of interaction. Others have used Facebook’s tools for more brazen promotional purposes: Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber teased recent single I Don’t Care via a pre-release Sticker on Insta; Major Lazer, J Balvin, and El Alfa made their collaborative track Que Calor available as a pre-release sticker on Facebook and IG a week before its official launch, while they also posted their own IG Stories encouraging fans to presave their track on Spotify. Meanwhile, the likes of Jess Glynne (for UK hit Thursday) and boy band Why Don’t We (for 8 Letters) have posted content via Lip Sync Live to spread the word of their priority singles. All the while, Facebook’s global reach in music has continued to spread. After launches in territories such as the US, UK, Germany and France, ‘Music on Facebook’ has this summer made its way to Brazil, in addition to other Latin American territories like Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. And earlier this
month, Facebook expanded its music offering to seven new European markets (including the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland), taking its total EMEA reach to over 30 countries. Facebook’s game plan in music is being driven by Tamara Hrivnak, the firm’s Head of Music Business Development and Partnerships. When Hrivnak was hired by FB back in January 2017, her name carried both familiarity and respect in music biz circles: Hrivnak spent eight years at Warner Music Group in roles including Vice President, Digital Business Affairs & Strategy for Warner/Chappell before joining Google in 2011, where she became Director Of Music Partnerships at YouTube and Google Play . Since leaving Google to join
and Instagram are places with audiences all over the world and we care deeply about bringing the music that’s most important to people, and local to them. so we took our time to make sure that we had partnerships in all of the right places – both global players, and local labels and societies. We want to do [things] in the right way. Do you have any updates on the popularity of music stickers? Music Stickers are one of our most popular music products, so we’re really excited to see the early results of [that], both on Instagram and Facebook. People are using Stickers as a soundtrack to their everyday moments, and artists are using them both to tease new releases in pre-release phase – an exclusive glimpse at a coming track – and also to
“WE TOOK OUR TIME TO MAKE SURE WE HAD PARTNERSHIPS IN ALL OF THE RIGHT PLACES – GLOBAL AND LOCAL PLAYERS. WE WANTED TO DO THINGS THE RIGHT WAY.” Mark Zuckerberg’s company, Hrivnak has pinched a few key hires from Record Label Land, while driving forward with a strategy to bring music and Facebook closer together on a global basis. Here, Hrivnak tells MBW about Facebook’s broader ambitions in music, what it would like to improve as time goes on – and why she thinks the firm is “filling a gap” in the streaming age... You just launched Facebook in seven new EU territories. Why did it take a while for these features to reach these markets? There are lots of music rights players around the world and we prioritize them all. Facebook
promote projects that they’re working on. The third use case [of Music on Facebook], my favorite, is artists simply sharing and having fun to create an evergreen connection with their fans. A great example of folks who do that well are J Balvin and Ariana Grande, [while] artists like Taylor Swift have used music stickers to promote big singles, like [in Swift’s case] ME!. Instagram [recently] launched a version of music Stickers we call lyric Stickers. In addition to the track playing in the background to your Story, you’re visually seeing the lyrics in that snippet on screen. We think that feature has great legs, and has really brought a new dimension to how 75
