UGC, customer photos and music: the rules on social media

User-generated content (UGC) is everything customers create and publish about a brand: photos, videos, reviews, stories, comments. It’s valuable to a company because it’s authentic, but it still belongs to whoever created it: you can repost it only with the author’s permission and, if recognisable people appear in it, their consent. The same care applies to music and to photos found online.

On social media everything seems to belong to everyone: one tap and it’s shared. For a business it isn’t like that. Photos, videos and music have an author, and using them without permission can be costly.

UGC: what it is and why brands love it

UGC means user-generated content. Examples: a customer’s photo with a cup of tea, an unboxing video, a review, a reel with a recipe. It’s valuable because it’s authentic: people trust other customers more than advertising. But it still belongs to its creator.

When you can repost customer photos

What the law says (in Italy)

• Copyright: Italy’s Law 633/1941 protects photographs. Creative photographic works are protected for the author’s lifetime plus 70 years; simple photographs (with no creative contribution) still have an exclusive right lasting 20 years from when they were taken.
• Image rights: to publish a person’s portrait you need their consent (Article 96 of the copyright law and Article 10 of the Civil Code), with few exceptions such as public figures in a news context.
• Privacy: a recognisable face is personal data (GDPR). Minors require extra care and parental consent.

How to ask for permission, step by step

1. Write to the person privately: introduce yourself, ask permission for a specific use (account post, website, advertising), offer to credit them.
2. Say where and for how long: a post on your account is different from a paid ad.
3. Let them say no, without insisting.
4. Save the reply (a screenshot is fine).
5. Always credit the author in the post.

An example message: “Hi Marta, what a lovely photo with our Sencha! Could we repost it on Five Leaf’s Instagram, crediting you? We won’t use it in ads without asking you again. If you’d rather not, no problem at all.”

At the fictional shop Five Leaf a customer’s photo had been taken from her account and used without asking. The fix: archive the post, write to her apologising, repost only after she said yes.

Photos found online

A photo found on an inspiration board or through an image search isn’t free. Use only your own photos, licensed photos (including free licences, respecting their conditions) or photos with written permission.

Music

Business accounts must use commercially licensed music. Platforms have dedicated libraries: Meta’s Sound Collection for Facebook and Instagram and TikTok’s Commercial Music Library. Popular songs often aren’t available to business accounts: the video can be muted, blocked or removed, and the label can claim damages.

For ads and videos on your website you need specific licences: tracks from paid libraries, tracks under free licences that allow commercial use (respecting their terms) or music composed to order.

Alt text: what it is

Alt text is the description of an image read out by screen readers, used by people who are blind or have low vision. It’s required by success criterion 1.1.1 of the WCAG guidelines: every image that carries information needs a text alternative. Instagram lets you write it in a post’s advanced settings, and on websites it goes in the image’s alt attribute (which also helps Google understand the image).

How to write it: simply and concretely, who, what, where. No “image of”, no hashtags, no keyword lists.

• No: “Our most beautiful kit! #matcha”
• Yes: “Hands whisking matcha with a bamboo whisk in a white bowl.”

Purely decorative images (a line, a background) don’t need a description: on a website you leave the attribute empty (alt="").

Collaborations

If a creator receives money or products in exchange for content, it’s advertising and must be disclosed clearly, at the start (#adv, paid partnership label), as Italy’s advertising self-regulation Digital Chart requires. That includes gifted products. The full rules are in social media advertising and giveaway rules.

Checklist before posting

• Is the photo or video ours, licensed, or do we have written permission?
• Have recognisable people given consent?
• Is the author credited?
• Is the music from the commercial library or licensed?
• Is there alt text?
• If there’s a deal with a creator, is the advertising disclosed?

Sources

• Law no. 633 of 22 April 1941 on copyright (Normattiva, Italian)
• WCAG 2.1, success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content (W3C)