Goal: no agreement with SIAE, stop the music

How many times scrolling through the Facebook or Instagram home, have we seen a reel, a post, a feed with embedded music? Certainly many, but from today it will no longer be possible, because Meta has not reached an agreement with SIAE to use Italian music.

Meta's choice

In October 2021 Facebook Inc. formalized the name change to Meta, to decouple the corporate identity of the social network of the same name and also to highlight the transition to a new business on virtual reality. This is stated by Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the company.

A spokesman for Meta made the announcement for the lack of licensing agreement with Siae, as he declares:

"The protection of the copyrights of composers and artists is a priority for us and for this reason we will start today the procedure to remove the songs of the Siae repertoire in our music library".

Once this decision has been made, the music of Italian songs protected by Siae will no longer be present in the posts, reels and stories of Facebook and Instagram.

SIAE's response

Siae has declared that the decision taken by Meta leaves Italian authors and publishers baffled. This is explained in a note:

“SIAE is asked to accept a unilateral proposal from Meta regardless of any transparent and shared assessment of the effective value of the repertoire. This position, together with Meta's refusal to share relevant information for the purposes of a fair agreement, is evidently in contrast with the principles enshrined in the Copyright Directive for which authors and publishers throughout Europe have strongly fought".

SIAE on its own does not understand the decision since in full negotiation it gave its full availability to sign the license through the use of transparent conditions. In fact, the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers itself declares that it has continued to seek an agreement with Meta despite the fact that the same company does not have a license from Siae since 1 January 2023 .

The Honorary President of SIAE Giulio Rapetti, aka Mogol, during the presentation of the album "Hidden Masterpieces" on the non-renewal of the agreement between SIAE and Meta, states:

“What we are doing to protect artists is a just battle, it is a sacred battle – added the former president of SIAE -. The copyright was approved in the House and in the Senate and has been stuck for 7-8 months in the implementing decrees, everything is still and we can't understand why, if it doesn't get released it's a battle we've lost”.

And now no more music on social media?

Meta says they have licensing deals with over 150 countries around the world and have failed to renew their deal with Siae. In fact, Meta has signed licensing agreements with Spanish, French, German, Swedish, English and Turkish partners with whom it has made a decision on the compensation equal to the one it had with SIAE. Siae says Meta tries to exploit its position to obtain savings by damaging the Italian creative industry . Within two days, Siae's licensed songs will not be available for Facebook, all videos will be blocked, while on Instagram the videos will be muted. However, the user can bypass the problem by choosing songs not covered by the Siae license.

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The article Meta: no agreement with Siae, stop the music was written on: Tech CuE | Close-up Engineering .