Social Media and Copyright Infringement: Why Brands Should Be Wary of Using Copyrighted Music for Social Posts

The Wild West days of social media video and content are over. While the early days might have been more loose and undefined, brands—and music companies—have clamped down on the use of their copyright-protected music by businesses of all sizes in their social videos and campaigns.

The most recent example comes from the headlines about Sony Music Entertainment filing a lawsuit against Marriott International, accusing the hotel company of willful copyright infringement on social media.

Let’s examine this news a bit more closely and provide you with the information and tools you might need to keep your brands’ content safe and clear without sacrificing quality or ease of use.

The latest social media copyright infringement case

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According to reports in Music Business Worldwide, Sony Music Entertainment has filed a lawsuit in the US against the major hotel company Marriott International. SME accuses the hotel company of willful infringement of copyright in social media posts and even directly links to videos on Marriott’s official social accounts, which clearly use Sony music.

The complaint goes on to say that Sony Music has identified over 900 infringements of its sound recordings, including works from notably top artists like Beyoncé, Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus, and more. Furthermore, of these alleged infringements, 913 come from social media posts made by hotels owned, managed, or franchised by Marriott—plus from other social media influencers paid by Marriott International.

This is a serious lawsuit, which is a perfect example of why companies of any size should be wary of using popular music in their social posts and videos without securing the right to do so.

How to keep your social content in the clear

So, without burying the lede here too much, the solution to avoiding social media copyright infringement lawsuits is actually pretty simple. Follow the social media copyright guidelines and don’t use any music which you haven’t secured licensing to use. Pretty simple, right?

To expand on this further, there are only three ways in which you can actually be absolutely sure to avoid copyright infringement on social media.

Don’t use any music in any of your social content (including even music in the background)
Only use music that you create yourself
License music legally through music licensing companies

We will guess that out of the three options above, you will lean towards licensing music legally through music licensing companies like Soundstripe. Of course, you can explore other options in this royalty free music industry (more on that term below).

You could also contact large music companies like Sony Music Entertainment to license songs from the biggest artists in the world. Still, those licenses will be quite expensive and usually only make sense for the largest companies.

For most people, licensing music from companies like Soundstripe is really going to be the sweet spot where solo creators, small businesses, and companies, universities, non-profits, and brands of pretty much all sizes can benefit from the perks of royalty free music.

The perks of royalty free music

What are these perks, you ask? Well, simply put, royalty free music for social media is the solution to all of your problems. With companies like Soundstripe, your brand can license music directly from us, covering our full library of music and sound effects for all your content needs.

Based out of Nashville, Tennessee, and founded by musicians ourselves, our Grammy-winning artists and producers have compiled thousands of tracks of high-quality music that are fully copyright-protected for you to use in your videos and content.

We have plenty more to read up on about what royalty free music and how it works, but if you’d like to dive into checking some tracks yourself, here’s our full library. And here are some curated tracks for use on different social platforms:

Using copyrighted music for social video content

Once you decide on the right royalty free music licensing for your social media needs, you can rest assured that any music tracks or sound effects you select from the Soundstripe library will be fully covered for use in your videos.

So, for example, if you’re a Marriott hotel looking to make a viral video to market a promotion or a solo creator looking to launch your own YouTube channel, you’ll be able to easily browse through tracks and find the right one for you.

If you have further questions about using copyrighted music on any additional social channels, here are some helpful guides for some major ones.