Check Your Instagram Music Library Before Sony Does
Week of September 1, 2026
Hi friends,
A grocery chain is being sued over Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Harry Styles and OutKast. Sony counted at least 392 unlicensed uses across Kroger's social accounts, and the detail that stings is that Kroger has licensed music from Sony 14 times since 2017. It knows where the form is.
The rest of the week is about who gets paid: Amazon's catalog is now inside YouTube Shopping, a million creators deep and with no published commission rate, and YouTube is paying its biggest names millions to stay off Netflix.
Let's get into it.
🛒 YouTube put Amazon's catalog inside its Shopping affiliate program
YouTube opened its Shopping Affiliate Program to Amazon on Aug 27. Eligible US creators can now tag Amazon products in Shorts, video and livestreams and earn commission, drawn from a curated catalog rather than all of Amazon. Over a million creators are enrolled in YouTube Shopping, where merchandise volume has grown 13x since Q1 2024.
Read the terms first. YouTube published no commission rate anywhere, not the blog post and not the Help Center, and Amazon Associates typically pays 2 to 4%. Commissions lock monthly and pay two AdSense cycles later, so a January sale lands in March. Reporting shows aggregate clicks and sales only, and YouTube can auto-tag products in a creator's back catalog. This is Amazon's answer to TikTok Shop without the fulfillment risk. Work out now how you'll attribute a tag you can't see.
🎵 Sony sued Kroger for $58.8 million over unlicensed music in ads
Sony Music sued Kroger Aug 21 over at least 392 unauthorized uses of its recordings on Kroger's TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat accounts, including tracks by Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Harry Styles and OutKast. Kroger had licensed Sony music 14 times since 2017, and Sony warned it in June 2025 it was still posting unlicensed clips. New unauthorized posts went up as recently as August. At the $150,000 statutory max per work, the filing puts exposure at $58.8 million.
That number is inflated. The suit counts 392 uses, not distinct works, and two songs alone were reused a dozen-plus times, so the real ceiling is lower. What isn't inflated: the same audit firm found 82% of brands run unlicensed music on live social, averaging over $10 million in exposure. Kroger is the fifth major brand sued over this in three years. Check your own audio library this week, paid influencers included.
📺 YouTube is paying creators millions to stay off Netflix
YouTube is offering top creators millions to stay exclusive for a set window, Bloomberg reported Aug 19, as Netflix signs YouTube-native talent to non-exclusive deals. Alan Chikin Chow and Nick DiGiovanni have already signed with Netflix, and Sean Evans of Hot Ones is reportedly in talks. Creators who post to both risk losing YouTube's marketing support and access to certain brand campaign revenue.
CEO Neal Mohan used to think competition drove viewers back to YouTube. He's changed his mind, since dual-posting undercuts YouTube's pitch that a video only exists in one place. If a creator you sponsor signs YouTube exclusivity, their Netflix-adjacent reach disappears. Ask before your next creator deal whether an exclusivity clause is already sitting on their desk.
🎤 Seller Spotlight
The 59-year-old who made $500,000 in her second year of UGC
It’s never too late to change your career. Eileen Munoz spent 28 years in an insurance cubicle and never cleared $70,000 in a year. She'd cry most Sundays knowing another full week in that seat was coming. In her mid-fifties, her husband told her to quit, and she did, without a plan. A friend introduced her to UGC, brands paying regular people to make content they could use to market products. Munoz had never edited a video or added a subtitle in her life.
In 2025, her second year, she made roughly $500,000 between UGC fees and TikTok Shop commissions. She sells into a demographic nobody else is chasing: skincare, supplements, menopause and joint products aimed at people navigating middle age, plus home and pet categories on the side.
@helloeileen_ @Toplux Nutrition magnesium helps to balance cortisol! #womenover50 #inflammation #bloating #magnesium #cortisol This is not medical advi... See more
There's research behind why this works. Marketing professor Florian Dost found that age increases a creator's assumed expertise while perceived attractiveness tends to lower it, and one TikTok experiment in his study put the optimal apparent age between the late forties and mid fifties. Munoz puts it more simply: brands have plenty of 20-year-olds to sell their products, and she won't buy skincare from one either. She buys from people her own age.
The average creator, per an older Adobe study, is already 40. If your roster is stocked entirely with people under 30, you're not targeting a younger audience so much as leaving an entire buying demographic with nobody who looks like them.
📎 Fortune
🧠 Brand Move of the Week
E.l.f. Beauty runs 15 livestreams a month and just had its biggest launch ever
When E.l.f. Beauty launched its new haircare line in June, it skipped its own retail partner's launch date. E.l.f. Hair went live on TikTok Shop a full week before it hit Target shelves, via a four hour livestream cohosted by beauty creator Yonna Jay and cosmetic chemist Erica Douglas, who goes by Sister Scientist. The stream pulled hundreds of thousands of views and enough sales to make it the biggest day-one category launch in the company's history.
That wasn't a one-off stunt. E.l.f. was the first major beauty brand on TikTok back in 2019, and live selling is now a fixed part of its operating rhythm rather than a campaign tactic. The brand runs roughly 15 livestreams a month, each running two to six hours, off a base of 3 million TikTok followers.
The math explains the commitment. TikTok Shop conversion during live sessions runs around 10%, against 2 to 3% for ecommerce sites generally and 1 to 4% for in-feed video, per social commerce consultancy Social/Tale. US shoppers spent $15.8 billion on TikTok Shop in 2025 and another $11.8 billion in the first half of this year, per eMarketer, and the platform has already taken roughly 2% of US online retail spend, more than Target and Costco combined, according to Consumer Edge. QVC and HSN have both started streaming on TikTok around the clock this year, chasing the same conversion math.
The lesson isn't do more livestreams. It's that E.l.f. treats live as core retail infrastructure rather than a marketing add-on, which is why it could break its own launch sequence with its retail partner and let TikTok go first. If your live commerce effort is still a quarterly event rather than a monthly cadence, you're competing against brands that already made it a habit.
📌 Other stories worth your attention
Follower count ranks last of eight criteria brands say they screen creators for, and still predicts pay the best. CreatorIQ's latest cut of its 5,095-creator survey, via Marketing Dive. Same tension we flagged two issues ago, sharper number this time. 📎 Marketing Dive via Net Influencer
Golf brand Good Good and Callaway apologized for an ad showing a woman shoved to the ground. Callaway's CEO admitted his own company approved it before it ran. 📎 BBC Sport
Meta will pay $16.7 to $18 billion, reports vary, to end its teen-safety trial with a coalition of state attorneys general. Instagram and Facebook will cap teen usage at two hours a day and hide like counts for under-18 accounts. 📎 PBS · CNBC
Ok, see you next week. In the meantime, Sell! Sell! Sell! 🫡