What does it mean for Universal artists now that TikTok can’t use their music?

TikTok and Universal Music Group negotiated for a long time over the former’s continued usage of UMG’s artists on the platform. Those licensing negotiations broke down this week. Both sides are pointing fingers at who is responsible.

TikTok says that UMG is putting “greed above the interests of artists”. The company also says that they’re not a streaming platform in the same way Spotify is. Therefore, they need their own sort of licensing deal.

UMG claims that TikTok was trying bully tactics and wanted them to accept “a deal worth less than the previous deal, far less than fair market value and not reflective of their exponential growth.” 

On Friday (February 2), UMG had a little more to say.

“In fact, TikTok’s own statement perfectly sums up its woefully outdated view: Even though TikTok (formerly Musical.ly) has built one of the world’s largest and most valuable social media platforms off the backs of artists and songwriters, TikTok still argues that artists should be grateful for the ‘free promotion’ and that music companies are ‘greedy’ for expecting them to simply compensate artists and songwriters appropriately, and on similar levels as other social media platforms currently do.”

Because UMG is the biggest label in the world, TikTok users will no longer be able to use some of the biggest artists in the world to soundtrack their videos. That includes U2, The Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish, Elton John, Harry Styles, ABBA, Ariana Grande, Adele, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and thousands and thousands more spanning over some three million songs.

With nowhere to go, TikTok has begun a three-phase removal of UMG songs.

1. Removal of UMG songs from its pre-cleared music library. If you’re a TikTok user and you want, say, a Who song as part of your video, that will be difficult. It all depends on where the user sources the track. UMG will have to monitor TikTok for uploads of their artists from other sources.
2. Videos of existing TikTok videos featuring UMG artists will be muted. That’ll be fun. You get a message that reads “This sound isn’t available” or “This music is currently unavailable.” You might see something like “Unfortunately, per Universal Music Group’s wishes, this artist’s music is not currently on TikTok.”
3. A takedown of any and all of the four million songs controlled by UMG Publishing Group. That will be complicated because what do you do with a song where only one songwriter of many on single song has a deal with Universal’s publishing arm?

Another question is “If Universal is willing to play hardball like this, what about Sony? Or Warner? Or any other label?”

Meanwhile, UMG artists are a little freaked out. Some have been making some good coin from the old licensing deal. They also won’t be able to promote their music via TikTok. UMG artists won’t be part of any videos that go viral and rack up thousands or even millions of views.

This could get very ugly.