Facebook Takes On YouTube With Officially Licenced Music Videos

In a direct challenge to YouTube, Facebook will launch officially licensed music videos in the US next month. But the social media giant is taking a decidedly more controlled approach.

Facebook has already notified the admins of some artist Facebook Pages of the coming move.

Artists will not need to add the videos to their Pages. Instead, Facebook will do it for them unless the artist opts out. Admins can also opt-in to official music videos before the August 1st launch within the dashboard.

Whether the artist opts-in or out, their music videos will still be available on Facebook. “If you don’t add music videos to your Page,” reads the message to Page admins, “they’ll instead be available on a new (Artist) • Official Music Page created by Facebook.”

Here are the instructions in the new Music Video admin tab:

‘Offical’ Videos Only, But What About Indie Artists?

All of this points to Facebook taking much more control of music videos than the wild wild west of YouTube.

Clearly all of Facebook’s video content will only come from official sources. So if you’re signed to UMG, Sony or WMG you are covered.

But who else qualifies as official? And what about DIY and indie artists?

Sources point to digital distributors being the conduit for official music video content. But for most distributors, handling video is new and it will take time for them to tool up.

More Details

Some more details emerged on Social Media.