Universal Music partners with social video app Lomotif

The deal will enable Lomotif’s users to create clips using songs from the major music rights holder. Founded in 2014, the US-based Lomotif has surpassed 225 million downloads in 200 countries. The platform has more than 31 million monthly active users who watch about 300 million videos every month.

Lomotif says the deal will empower creators on their platform. “Our deal with Universal Music Group will continue to grow users and increase engagement within our platform, a destination for emerging artists, and will significantly expand the types of music our community can utilise, collaborate with and share,” Lomotif founder and CEO Paul Yang said.

“With nearly 800 million videos created to date, we are heading in a great direction as a platform and making high-value content, functionality and features available to our community will only help us grow exponentially.”

The development comes on the heels of Lomotif’s recently concluded acquisition by ZVV Media – a joint venture between Zash Global Media and Entertainment and product-research company Vinco Ventures. Under the new management, Lomotif will be rebranded to LoMo and repositioned in a new North American marketing campaign. The licensing partnership also adds to Lomotif’s other content deals with Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

On UMG’s part, the deal grows the company’s collection of deals with social media platforms this year, including TikTok and SnapChat. It also renewed its licensing agreement with Triller in February.

Meanwhile, TikTok is proving to be a major music discovery platform with more than 75% and 63% of its US users discovering new artists and music via the app, respectively. This is according to three studies commissioned by the company that sought to explore its app’s impact on music and culture.