Reports by Variety currently indicate that Snapchat is working to up their music game. According to the news outlet, the company is amidst negotiations with three powerful music companies, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, to acquire licensing for song catalogs to use in the Snapchat app. As such, the latter would be so it is no longer required to play a song during from another app so it takes part in a snap story. The move would allow users to pick music from the Snapchat app itself to add to their stories. Two industry sources familiar with the brands have confirmed the news by the Wall Street Journal.
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In doing so, Snapchat would become similar to the ByteDance's Tik Tok app which is similar to its predecessors, musical.ly and Facebook do. Moreover, Snapchat would only be precisely looking to acquire the rights of certain songs for these very purposes. And although Snapchat previously partnered with music companies like SiriusXM's Pandora to provide direct access to music, the latter was only made available to Premium Pandora subscribers. Moreover, the short-video and photo application are in no way attempting to build a music-streaming service like Spotify or Apple music.
Further details on this are expected later, but as of yet, there have been no comments from Snapchat representatives.