Facebook Shares Confusing Guidelines for Live Streaming Performances

The pandemic brought a powerhouse of talented artists, sharing their music and performances through live streaming and virtual concerts. Last week, confusing new guidelines regarding Facebook live streaming performances, effective Oct. 1, have the potential to limit streaming of concerts.

facebook live streaming
Owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook’s new guidelines say:

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.

Representatives for Facebook

They have since clarified their rules by saying that they want to continue letting artists express their talent, but still protect them through agreements by rights holders.

We want to encourage musical expression on our platforms while also ensuring that we uphold our agreements with rights holders. These agreements help protect the artists, songwriters, and partners who are the cornerstone of the music community — and we’re grateful for how they’ve enabled the amazing creativity we’ve seen in this time.

Our partnerships with rights holders have brought people together around music on our platforms. As part of our licensing agreements, there are limitations around the amount of recorded music that can be included in Live broadcasts or videos. While the specifics of our licensing agreements are confidential, today we’re sharing some general guidelines to help you plan your videos better:

Music in stories and traditional live music performances (e.g., filming an artist or band performing live) are permitted.

The greater the number of full-length recorded tracks in a video, the more likely it may be limited (more below on what we mean by “limited”).

Shorter clips of music are recommended.

There should always be a visual component to your video; recorded audio should not be the primary purpose of the video.

These guidelines are consistent across live and recorded video on both Facebook and Instagram, and for all types of accounts — i.e. pages, profiles, verified and unverified accounts. And although music is launched on our platforms in more than 90 countries, there are places where it is not yet available. So if your video includes recorded music, it may not be available for use in those locations.

Facebook

Over the course of this year, live streaming concerts have been popular to say the least, it has and still is a necessity for most parts of the world. Popular musicians like Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry have used this platform, but most importantly, new upcoming artists used this method to promote their music.

What’s interesting is that although they claim they want to “encourage musical performances on [their] platform,” they still shut down live streaming accounts.

Facebook owns Instagram, as well, but no new rules have been added to their live streaming.

For right now, don’t fret about Facebook not sharing your favorite live performances. LAUNCH is a website independent from social networks that is here to provide support for the live music community. The team offers anyone to join in on Sept. 17 for an introduction meeting to the new platform. Together, they hope to promote and encourage the struggling scene of live music.

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