Canva Partners with Warner Music Group and Merlin to Provide Commercial Music for Users

Canva / WMG / Merlin

Canva, the popular visual design platform, has announced new partnerships with music labels Warner Music Group (WMG) and Merlin. This will allow paying subscribers and education customers (Canva Pro, Canva for Education, and Canva for Nonprofit) in the US, Europe, Brazil, Canada, and Australia to use commercial music in their creations, such as videos and presentations starting this fall. When these works are published, the music rights holders will earn royalties.

This move makes Canva the first visual design platform to offer commercial music at the point of creation, following in the footsteps of social media platforms like YouTube, Meta, and Pinterest, which have recently secured deals with music publishers.

With this, creators get access to higher-quality music that can make their content more engaging, especially short-form video content such as Instagram Reels and TikTok, both of which many creators use Canva to create. According to the company, the export of Canva designs using TikTok templates have tripled in the last year. In addition, artists are able to reach new audiences and have a new revenue stream when their music is used.

In March, Canva introduced Beat Sync, a new tool in its editor to help users match their video footage to the beat of their selected soundtrack. This should make the commercial music library even more valuable.