Canva Inks Deals With Warner Music Group, Merlin to Let Users Incorporate Song Clips in Their Visual Designs
Canva, the software company that hosts an “all-in-one visual communication platform,” announced partnerships with Warner Music Group and Merlin to let Canva customers use music clips in their designs.
With the deals, Canva will become the first visual design platform to add commercially released music clips at the point of creation for content that can be shared across multiple platforms. Starting this fall, the libraries of Warner Music Group (including Warner Recorded Music and Warner Chappell Music) and Merlin will be available for Canva Pro, Canva for Education and Canva for Nonprofit customers to add music clips to their designs, with small teams using Canva for Teams to follow.
More from Variety
Labels and artists can get their music “in front of millions of engaged creators” in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Brazil and Australia, according to Canva — and will earn royalties when clips of their songs are used in published Canva designs.
“Music is such a fundamental expression of creativity, and offers an inspirational starting point for many,” said Silvia Oviedo, Canva’s head of content, discovery and print. “We are thrilled to welcome Warner Music Group and Merlin to the Canva content ecosystem, and can’t wait to see what millions of music fans, content creators, educators and beyond design using content from their favorite artists.”
In addition to using popular songs in videos or carousels for social media, Canva customers can also add clips of their favorite tracks to presentations, internal training videos, educational videos and more. Canva recently launched Beat Sync, a tool in the Canva editor that helps users match their video footage to the beat of a selected soundtrack. According to the company, exports of Canva designs using TikTok templates has more than tripled in the last year; overall, the number of videos created on Canva has increased 70% in the last 12 months.
“This collaboration with Canva will provide new opportunities for our artists to increase their reach and engage their fans, while also empowering Canva’s creator community to elevate their designs with our robust catalog,” said Jessica Goldenberg, WMG’s senior VP, digital strategy and business development. “Together with Canva, we look forward to shaping the future of visual communication by enabling creativity in ways that are uniquely achievable with music.”
Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota commented, “Merlin prides itself on being a market leader in bringing independent music to new discovery platforms — this partnership with Canva will allow creators to connect with the vast array of Merlin member music from around the world. This is yet another significant milestone in Merlin’s commitment to drive the evolution of the digital music landscape and open up new forms of revenue opportunities for our members.”
Launched in 2013, Canva’s online visual communications and collaboration platform features a simple drag-and-drop user interface and templates for presentations, documents, websites, social media graphics, posters, apparel and videos, along with a library of fonts, stock photography, illustrations, video footage and audio clips. Sydney, Australia-based Canva says it has 135 million users globally, who on average create 250 designs every second.
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
