Snapchat allows users to add music to snaps

Snapchat is launching a new feature called “Sounds” which allows users to add licensed music to their Snaps.

Despite being a pioneer in the story format, Snapchat is among the latest to offer the ability to add music to photos and video clips.

TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook all offer this feature already – now Snapchat is playing catch-up.

Music can be added to Snaps before or after capture. The “robust” catalog includes emerging and established artists.

“Music makes video creation and communication more expressive, and provides a personal way to recommend music to your closest friends. On average, over 4 billion Snaps are created every day. “

When users receive a Snap with music added, they can swipe up to view album art, song title, and artist name.

A “Play This Song” link is included, which allows users to listen to the entire song on streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud.

In order to enable the inclusion of licensed music, Snapchat now has multi-year agreements with these major, independent labels:

• Warner Music Group
• Merlin
• NMPA
• Universal Music Publishing Group
• Music by Warner Chappell
• cobalt
• BMG music edition

In the coming months, Snapchat plans to roll out a feature that allows users to create and add their own sounds to Snaps.

This is another feature that TikTok users are already familiar with.

Sounds is exclusive to the iOS version of Snapchat and is now available worldwide.

Business is booming at Snapchat

Snapchat is investing in new features at a time when the app is seeing record gains from new users.

According to the company’s latest earnings report, Snapchat added 11 million daily active users in the third quarter of 2020.

So far in 2020, Snapchat has added a total of 20 million daily active users. This means that over 50% of this year’s gains occurred in the third quarter alone.

Now the total number of daily active Snapchat users stands at 249 million.

That’s tens of millions more than Twitter, which reported 186 million monetizable daily active users in its second quarter earnings report.

To put these gains in perspective, Snapchat struggled to win all new users between 2018 and 2019.

From Q3 2019 to Q3 2020, Snapchat gained nearly 40 million daily active users worldwide.

So what is fueling this growth?

Snapchat attributes several factors in its results report:

• A redesigned Android application
• Increased interest in original Discover content
• Greater interest in Snapchat shows
• AR lenses go viral

Snapchat’s sloppy Android app received a major update last year, which has spurred its growth in markets where Android is the dominant operating system.

The company’s investment in original content is also paying off, as the total time users spend watching Snapchat shows daily has increased by more than 50% year over year.

AR (augmented reality) lenses continue to be very popular with people. Not just Snapchat users, but users all over the web.

Its most recent success, the “Anime” lens, was used over 3 billion times in the first week of its launch.

The lens allows users to take selfies and instantly transform into an anime character.

This particular lens has gone viral, which means photos taken with the anime lens have been shared on other apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

In fact, Fast Company reported that the goal was a bigger hit on TikTok than on Snapchat.

Of course, since Snapchat is the only app with the anime lens, people had to download it in order to use the lens themselves.

Thus, the impact of AR lenses on the growth of new users cannot be overlooked.

As the number of new users grows, so does the company’s revenue. Which means we should see an ongoing investment in original content, new features, and fun goals to share across the web.

Sources: press.snap.com, investor.snap.com