Since covid 19 and the absence of being able to play live gigs, many musicians have understandably moved to using social media as a way to communicate their music. Aside from many of the technical challenges, its useful to not FaceBook’s terms relating to music which are as follows
Music Guidelines
These supplemental terms apply if you post or share any videos or other content containing music on any Facebook Products.You are responsible for the content you post
People use our Products to share content with their family and friends. Keep in mind you remain solely responsible for the content that you post, including any music that features in that content. Nothing in these terms constitutes any authorization by us with respect to any use of music on any of our Products.
Use of music for commercial or non-personal purposes in particular is prohibited unless you have obtained appropriate licenses.You may not use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience We want you to be able to enjoy videos posted by family and friends. However, if you use videos on our Products to create a music listening experience for yourself or for others, your videos will be blocked and your page, profile or group may be deleted. This includes Live.Unauthorized content may be removed
If you post content that contains music owned by someone else, your content may be blocked, or may be reviewed by the applicable rights owner and removed if your use of that music is not properly authorized.You may not be able to post or access videos containing music in every country of the world
We want you to be able to share videos with your family and friends wherever they are, but any music in your video, if it is allowed at all, may not be available in all countries of the world.
The key phrase here for many is
Use of music for commercial or non-personal purposes in particular is prohibited unless you have obtained appropriate licenses.
FB Customers v FB users
Many musicians fail to appreciate that “FB customers” are thos who pay for adverts and FB is of course a substantial public limited corporation with its own business plan in play. Many of us are “users” and there are conditions set out by FB as to how we use their business model. I’m always amused when artists insist “FB should do X and Y” as FB is not a charitable resource for musicians, its a business and much as I would love for them to be the former role, its not going to happen anytime soon.
This is one of the many reasons why I always advise artists to create their own web presence that they control rather than rely on 3rd party businesses and often placing “their egg in one basket”
I’m astonished that many artists don’t pay attention to this aspect of marketing and fail to appreciate that social media and platforms like Spotify are all businesses whose primary function is to maximise profits. I’d love this to be not the case, but that’s plain wishful thinking…
