If you are a visual artist using Facebook or Instagram to share your work, promote your exhibitions, or build your audience, there is a legal situation developing that you need to understand. It involves music you may have been using in good faith directly from Meta’s own platforms, and it has implications that go well beyond what most artists realize.
This is not about streaming music illegally or downloading tracks from questionable sources. This is about music that Facebook itself offered you, freely, through its built-in audio tools and why using it may not be as safe as it appeared.
The Situation: A Lawsuit That Changes How You Should Think About In-Platform Audio
In July 2022, Epidemic Sound, a Swedish music licensing company that owns over 50,000 professional tracks filed a landmark $142 million copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta Platforms (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram). The core allegation: that Meta was making Epidemic Sound’s music available to users through its Audio Library without a valid license to do so.
In December 2025, Epidemic Sound filed a second lawsuit against Meta, this time alleging infringement of an additional 1,000 works across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. As of early 2026, both cases are actively moving through the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, with dueling summary judgment motions filed in April 2026.
The lawsuit alleged that Meta “knowingly, intentionally and brazenly” made music available to users without authorization, and that Meta had “ignored repeated notices of infringement and requests for access to the tools that would help stop the infringement.”
The critical language for anyone who has used Facebook’s music tools: Epidemic Sound argued that Meta encouraged its users to commit copyright infringement not just Meta itself. While the legal action is directed at Meta, the underlying problem is that the music many users believed was cleared for use may not have been.
Sources:
Epidemic Sound AB v. Meta Platforms, Inc., Case No. 3:22-cv-04223, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: https://cand.uscourts.gov/cases-e-filing/cases/325-cv-10355-jsc/epidemic-sound-ab-v-meta-platforms-inc-fka-facebook-inc
Music Business Worldwide coverage of the second lawsuit (December 2025): https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/epidemic-sound-sues-meta-again-alleging-copyright-infringement-of-1000-additional-works/
Digital Music News summary judgment update (April 2026): https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2026/04/06/epidemic-sound-meta-lawsuit-summary-judgment
Why This Affects Visual Artists Specifically
Visual artists who use social media professionally are not simply casual users. When you post a studio walkthrough with background music, share a timelapse of a painting in progress, promote an upcoming show, or run any content tied to your gallery, brand, or commercial practice, your use of music shifts from personal to commercial — and the rules change significantly.
Meta’s own guidelines state that users are:
“responsible for the content they post” and that “using music for commercial or non-personal purposes is prohibited unless you have obtained appropriate licenses.”
That sentence puts the liability on you, not on Meta, even when the music appeared as an available option inside Facebook’s own tools. Plus, Artists Unintentionally Gave Their Rights Away To Facebook & Instagram.
The design of Meta’s audio features has created a dangerous gap: the platform does not prevent business pages or professional creators from selecting music that is not cleared for commercial use. It simply allows the post to go live. Content can accumulate views and engagement for weeks or months before rights holders identify it. Then the audio is muted, the content removed, or the account flagged.
Understanding the Difference: Personal Use vs. Commercial Use
This distinction is where many visual artists find themselves in unintentional violation.
Personal use refers to non-commercial content posted from a personal profile — sharing a memory, a personal moment, or something with no business intent. Meta has licensing agreements with major music labels that cover this type of use.
Commercial use includes anything that promotes your art practice, your gallery, your exhibitions, your products, or your brand. If the post exists to build your professional presence or sell something, it is commercial — regardless of whether you think of yourself as a business in the traditional sense.
For commercial content, Meta’s guidance is clear: you should use music exclusively from the Meta Sound Collection, which is the library specifically cleared for business and commercial use on Meta platforms.
The broader in-platform music catalog, the one with popular tracks available through Reels and Stories, is not cleared for commercial use on business pages.
Meta Sound Collection (free, cleared for commercial use on Meta platforms)
What You Should Do Now
Audit your existing content. Review posts on your Facebook and Instagram business pages that include music. If you used popular tracks from the general music picker rather than the Sound Collection, those posts carry risk. Consider removing or re-editing them.
Understand the Sound Collection’s limitations. The Meta Sound Collection is cleared for content that lives exclusively on Meta platforms. If you repurpose your Facebook content on YouTube, TikTok, your website, or anywhere outside Meta’s ecosystem, that same audio is not covered. You need a separate license for cross-platform use.
Use a properly licensed third-party source for anything cross-platform. If your content lives on multiple platforms, invest in a music licensing subscription that covers all of them. Reputable options with proper documentation include:
Artlist: https://artlist.io
Musicbed: https://www.musicbed.com
Soundstripe: https://www.soundstripe.com
Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io
Keep your license documentation. If a claim is ever filed against your content, proof of a valid license at the time of posting is your primary protection.
Know your appeal rights. If your content is wrongly flagged including if you posted original audio that Facebook’s automated system misidentifies — you have the right to dispute the claim through Meta’s Music Rights Center. Document everything: original audio files, export timestamps, license invoices.
The Broader Legal Landscape Artists Should Watch
The Epidemic Sound vs. Meta case is part of a wider tightening of copyright enforcement across social media. In December 2025, Warner Music Group separately sued fashion retailer PacSun for using tracks by major artists including Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars, and Ariana Grande in promotional social media posts without clearance. The lawsuit covered over 290 works and was filed in California.
At the federal level, Congress has been actively working on legislation to strengthen creator protections in the age of AI and digital media. The NO FAKES Act, reintroduced in 2026, would require anyone using an artist’s voice or likeness including through AI tools to obtain explicit permission.
The TRAIN Act would create transparency requirements around AI training data involving creative works.
The Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act (S.2455/H.R.7209) is a 2025–2026 bipartisan US bill designed to compel AI companies to disclose training data to creators. It allows copyright holders to use an administrative subpoena to determine if their works were used to train generative AI models without authorization.
These developments signal a broader shift: the era of casual, assumption-based music use on social media is closing. Enforcement is becoming more structured, more frequent, and more consequential.
Warning: Predatory Scams Are Exploiting This Issue to Target Creators
As awareness of the Epidemic Sound vs. Meta situation has grown, so has a parallel threat: bad actors using this very issue as cover to intimidate and defraud artists, galleries, curators, and creative businesses. If the real legal landscape is complicated, scammers are counting on that confusion to work in their favor.
These are not legitimate copyright enforcement actions. They are predatory schemes designed to frighten creators into paying money, handing over account credentials, or clicking malicious links and they are becoming more sophisticated.
Example below, the email was fake and a simple gmail account. No legal office is going to send out a letter like this with a generic Gmail email.
How these scams typically work. You receive an unsolicited message via email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, or a fake platform notification claiming that your content has violated music licensing law and that you owe an immediate settlement fee to avoid legal action. The message may reference real lawsuits like the Epidemic Sound case to appear credible. It will usually create urgency, threaten account suspension or legal consequences, and demand payment through unconventional channels like wire transfer, gift cards, or cryptocurrency.
Red flags to watch for. Legitimate copyright enforcement does not demand immediate payment to avoid a lawsuit. Real notices come through official Meta systems or from verified legal representatives not through DMs or personal email addresses. Be especially wary of any notice that: lacks specific details about which piece of your content violated which specific work; uses aggressive or threatening language designed to panic you; asks you to click a link to “resolve” the issue; or requests payment outside of a formal legal process.
What to do if you receive one. Do not click any links in the message.
Do not pay anything. Do not respond with personal information. Report the message as spam or phishing directly through the platform.
If you genuinely believe there may be a legitimate copyright concern with your content, go directly to Meta’s official help pages never use contact information provided in a suspicious message.
The U.S. Copyright Office published guidance in early 2026 specifically warning creators about the rise of copyright scams, noting that bad actors exploit misunderstandings about how copyright works to pressure victims into unnecessary payments.
For a full breakdown of how to identify and report copyright scams.
A Real Story: What Happened to Us
We are sharing something personal here, because we believe honesty serves artists better than polished distance.
Before founding Hyperlux Magazine and Poetic Tiger Gallery, we ran a web design and digital marketing agency for 27 years. We were not newcomers to copyright. We worked with clients on intellectual property issues regularly. We understood the rules or so we thought.
For a blog post commenting on Twitter’s rebrand to X, we used an image that had been widely circulated across news sites, social media, reddit boards. It seemed harmless. The image was everywhere – I mean every where. We assumed that widespread circulation meant it was free to use since pretty much everyon and their brother was usisng it. That assumption was wrong.
Nearly a year later, we received an email from a law firm claiming to represent the Associated Press, stating that the image was copyrighted and that we owed a significant sum for using it without permission.
Our first instinct was that it was a scam. It looked like one, no formal letter, just an email with a link. We ignored it. The emails kept coming, escalating in tone, arriving weekly. That is when we knew we had to take it seriously.
We spent hours researching the firm, reading forum posts, Reddit threads, conflicting accounts from other small business owners some who had paid thousands to settle, others who insisted it was predatory but not illegal. We could not get a clear answer. Eventually we consulted a copyright attorney, who confirmed what we did not want to hear: the firm was legitimate, we had used a copyrighted image without permission, and we were legally in the wrong even though the use was non-commercial, non-malicious, and genuinely accidental.
Our Attorney’s Words Stayed With Us
Our attorney’s words stayed with us: copyright infringement does not require intent. An honest mistake is still a violation.
We settled. The financial and emotional cost was real. We also learned something that extended well beyond images this same dynamic applies to music, to fonts, to video footage, to any creative asset you did not make yourself and do not hold documented rights to use.
One detail from that experience that directly applies to the music situation outlined in this article: when we asked the firm’s paralegal how to avoid this happening again, they told us that even images sourced through verified platforms like Canva can create liability if the original uploader did not have rights, or if the image is later removed.
The lesson was stark.
We are sharing this because we know how easy it is to believe you are doing the right thing. We did. And we still ended up in a legal situation that cost us money, time, and significant stress. If this happened to a team that had spent nearly three decades working in digital marketing, it can happen to anyone.
The full account of what happened is published here: https://risevisible.com/can-you-get-sued-for-a-blog-image-yesheres-how-it-almost-happened-to-us
We have a thing for oversharing...
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What If It Is Real and You Are Actually Being Sued?
If you have received a legitimate copyright notice or legal action and not a scam, but actual formal communication from a rights holder or their legal representative, here is what you need to know.
First: a notice is not automatically a lawsuit. A cease-and-desist letter or DMCA takedown notice is a demand to stop using the material, and sometimes a request for compensation. It is serious and should not be ignored, but until a formal complaint is filed in court, you are not yet being sued. The distinction matters. Many of these situations are resolved before they ever reach litigation.
Do not ignore it. Even if you believe the claim is wrong, or that you used the music in good faith, ignoring a legitimate copyright notice is the worst thing you can do. Failing to respond can be used against you and may result in a default judgment. Respond in writing and keep a record of everything.
Do not admit liability. Acknowledging that you used the music is not the same as admitting wrongdoing. However, do not make statements in writing or verbally that could be interpreted as an admission of infringement. Keep your responses factual and neutral until you have legal guidance.
Gather your documentation immediately. Collect everything relevant: screenshots of where the music came from (the Facebook audio picker, the Sound Collection, a third-party licensing platform), any license agreements or confirmation emails, the original content files with timestamps, and any correspondence with Meta or the claiming party. If you used music that Facebook itself offered through its built-in tools, that context is directly relevant to your defense, particularly given the ongoing Epidemic Sound vs. Meta litigation.
Contact an intellectual property attorney. This is not optional. Copyright law is complex, statutory damages can be significant and up to $30,000 per work infringed, and up to $150,000 per work if infringement is found to be willful and a qualified IP attorney can assess your specific situation, identify valid defenses, and negotiate on your behalf. Many IP attorneys offer an initial consultation. If cost is a concern, some volunteer legal organizations serve artists and creative businesses specifically.
Resources for finding legal help:
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA): https://vlany.org provides legal assistance to artists and arts organizations
California Lawyers for the Arts: https://www.calawyersforthearts.org
U.S. Copyright Office guidance on infringement claims and remedies: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
Understand what a legitimate notice must contain. Under the DMCA, a valid copyright infringement notice is required to identify the copyrighted work being claimed, identify the specific content that is allegedly infringing, and include contact information for the claimant. If a notice you received does not include these specifics, it may not meet the legal threshold for a valid claim and another reason to get legal guidance before responding.
Good Faith?
Consider whether good faith use applies to your situation. If you used music that Meta provided through its own audio library, believing it was cleared for your use, that context may be a relevant factor in how a claim is assessed. The ongoing Epidemic Sound vs. Meta cases specifically center on the question of whether Meta properly licensed the music it made available to users. You are not alone in this situation, and the legal landscape around it is actively evolving.
The most important thing is to take it seriously, act quickly, and get qualified help. Do not attempt to navigate a real copyright legal matter without professional guidance
A Note on Protecting Yourself Going Forward
The core principle is simple: if you did not create the music and cannot produce documentation proving you have the right to use it commercially, do not use it in professional content. “It was available in the app” is not a legal defense, and Meta’s terms of service place responsibility for content squarely on the person posting it.
As a visual artist, your work and your reputation are your most valuable assets. The same care you bring to protecting your own creative work — your imagery, your compositions, your voice — should extend to every element of the content you put into the world.
Hyperlux Magazine is committed to keeping artists informed on the legal and cultural developments that shape creative practice. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have specific concerns about content you have posted, consult a qualified intellectual property attorney.
