Adobe Premiere Mobile App Launches Hundreds of Thousands of Tracks Licensed From UMG, WMG

Adobe has just made it easier for creators to add their favorite hot jams to short-form video clips.

On Tuesday, the free Adobe Premiere mobile app, designed for creators to make videos for platforms like YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels, added hundreds of thousands of songs licensed from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. Initially, the music tracks are available to users in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Top-trending tracks avaliable in the app at launch include: Olivia Dean’s “So Easy (To Fall In Love)”; Sombr’s “Homewrecker”; Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”; Justin Bieber’s “Daisies”; Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance”; Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho”; Vance Joy’s “Riptide”; OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars”; and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.”

There’s a bit of a catch: The music from UMG and WMG is licensed to Premiere mobile app for personal, non-commercial use. But in most cases, according to Adobe, the music has been cleared for use on YouTube Shorts and other platforms. (If you’re using Premiere mobile for projects that require commercially licensed music, you can also continue to access Adobe Stock Audio.)

Users of Premiere on mobile can browse, search and preview trending music by artist or track; filter by genre and duration; bookmark favorites; and explore popular music through label-featured collections. Once they select a track, they can then add up to 60 seconds directly to their video. In addition, Premiere mobile provides customizable templates paired with music.

“Adobe hasn’t built the music muscle before this,” Jay LeBoeuf, Adobe head of AI audio for creators, told Variety.

The pain point Adobe is addressing is that creators using Premiere on mobile haven’t had an easy way to add music to their videos in the editing stage. “Creators want to work with the songs and artists they love,” LeBoeuf said. According to a survey in June funded by Adobe that was conducted by the Berklee College of Music, 83.7% of creators said they have built a video around chosen music. But many also say they have encountered copyright issues in trying to use music in their videos, and often resort to using a royalty-free track instead.

With the UMG and WMG deals, “creators get access to the content they need in an approved way,” said LeBoeuf. “It was important for us to have a legitimate deal with the labels.”

“Good music is scarce,” he continued. “There’s a reason a certain song is driving a TikTok or Instagram trend.” Adobe is seeking additional licensing deals for music.

Bryan Stone, Universal Music Group’s senior VP of business development, said Adobe’s Premiere on mobile is the only creative application the music company has licensed in this way without a social component. Bringing licensed music from UMG artists into Adobe Premiere mobile gives creators new ways to build videos around the songs they love while helping UMG’s artists and songwriters reach new audiences, he said.

“We are excited about being at that level of deepening the relationship with creators. We know that music is where creators start,” said Stone.

In a statement, Rachel Scarpati, WMG’s VP of digital strategy and business development, said, “The way people experience and engage with music extends far beyond traditional listening platforms. Our partnership with Adobe Premiere mobile integrates WMG’s catalog directly into the creative process, opening up new possibilities for creative expression and deeper fan engagement.”

The Premiere mobile app provides video-editing tools, “studio-quality” audio tools like Enhance Audio to reduce distracting background noise and Adobe Firefly-powered AI features to generate creative assets. The app is free to download and use (with no watermarks inserted); users can purchase credits for gen-AI image, video and sound effects created with Firefly.