Snap Sounds Creator Fund With Monthly Grants of Up to Rs. 40 Lakh for Emerging Artists in India Announced

Snap Sounds Creator Fund was launched in India on Tuesday. The newly announced creator fund is a grant programme that is designed to recognise emerging artists in India, according to the company, which has promised grants of up to $50,000 (roughly Rs. 41 lakh) per month to upcoming artists in the country who distribute music on Snapchat via an independent digital music distribution platform. The Sounds feature is designed to allow users to add licensed music to Snaps and other creations on the platform.

Snapchat parent firm Snap on Tuesday announced the launch of the Snapchat Sounds Creator Fund in India. As mentioned earlier, the grant is aimed at upcoming artists in India. Grants of up to $50,000 (roughly Rs. 41 lakh) per month will be provided to the emerging artists who will distribute their music on DistroKid, which is a digital music distribution service. The grants for creators in India will start by mid-November, according to Snap.

The Snapchat Sounds feature lets users add licensed music to Snaps. The company says that videos created with music from Sounds on Snapchat were used in over 2.7 billion videos on the platform, and that these videos have been viewed over 183 billion times.

Snap has partnered with DistroKid to distribute payments for up to 20 artists per month at $2,500 (roughly Rs. 2,04,800), the company said in a press release. Meanwhile, licensed music from creators can also be added to playlists in the Snapchat Sounds creative tool for the Lens and Spotlight features, according to Snap.

The company recently rolled out several new features for the members of its Snapchat+ premium subscription service including Custom Story Expiration.

Some of the new features introduced new functionality for subscribers paying for the company's Snapchat+ premium subscription service. The firm added support for Custom Story Expiration, which enables users to manually select the time limit for the duration a story stays publicly visible. Snap also added custom notifications, story borders, and more for Snapchat+ members. Users can also gift a Snapchat+ subscription to a friend through the app.

The Snapchat+ subscription officially arrived in India in August. Its members are given access to a collection of exclusive experimental and pre-release features before regular users. They also receive prioritised support from the Snapchat team. It is available in India at a price of Rs. 49 per month. Customers in the US have to pay $3.99 (roughly Rs. 330) for a monthly Snapchat+ subscription.