Facebook is jumping into the music business and they’ve invited Proton (and all our labels) to their beta test. With over 2.2 billion Facebook users, this is a massive opportunity.
For now, Facebook’s plan is NOT to build a traditional music platform like Spotify or Apple Music. Instead, Facebook will explore different ways to integrate music directly into their social network and family of apps like Instagram (900 million users), Messenger (1.4 billion users), and Oculus VR. There’s huge potential.
IMPORTANT! The Facebook beta is NOT monetized yet:
During the beta Facebook won’t report activity or pay for streaming activity.
Monetization will start after the beta, later in 2019.
If you don’t want to participate in the beta, contact us. Proton highly recommends participating in the beta so your label and artists can take advantage of new Facebook features as they launch. If you opt out of the beta you’ll still be able to opt back into Facebook any time later.
How will it work? What's the plan?
Facebook aims to make it easier for users to upload and share videos featuring music, not just on Facebook, but on other Facebook apps too like Instagram, Messenger, and Oculus. After the beta, music labels and artists would earn a share of ad revenue, similar to YouTube’s ad based monetization.
The first experiments during the beta are “Music in Stories” for both Facebook and Instagram, where users can add official music to any story on Facebook or Instagram. With “Music in Stories”, users can select music from a large library of official content: and Proton labels are now featured in that library!
Learn more about “Music in Stories” for Instagram here or for Facebook here.