Universal Music is breaking up with TikTok over music
Universal Music Group, the biggest label in the world, has broken off licensing talks with TikTok. The two companies couldn’t make a deal on how much TikTok has to pay in order for users to tag their videos with music my Universal artists. Songs have already started being pulled from TikTok. That includes Drake and Taylor Swift, among many others.
From Music Business Worldwide:
“As a result, its full catalog – including around 3 million recorded music tracks, and around 4 million songs whose publishing is represented by UMG – will no longer be legally cleared for use on TikTok.
“UMG says that its attempts to negotiate a new license with TikTok collapsed after it pressed the ByteDance-owned service on “three critical issues”, including ‘appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok’s users’.”
Universal has also published this blistering open letter on the dispute.
TikTok says:
“’Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent.
“’TikTok has been able to reach ‘artist-first’ agreements with every other label and publisher. Clearly, Universal’s self-serving actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters and fans.’”
What’s the beef? TikTok says that it’s not a streaming music service platform and shouldn’t be charged by the labels as one.
Interesting timing, too. The agreement ended today (January 31), the same day that a bunch of social media heads will testify in Washington. This includes as today TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew answering questions at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the US on “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.”
So what will TikTok do? It’s already run into a similar sort of issue in Australia, so they have data on how pulling a catalogue affects usage. TikTok will survive, but how they move forward will be interesting.
