Unless you have been hiding under a rock – or happen to not be on TikTok at all – you have probably already heard the whole drama between Universal Music Group and TikTok.
What happened? How would this affect the platform? Let’s take a moment to review what is happening.
How is Music Available on TikTok?
Let’s start with the obvious: how does TikTok grant us access to music? TikTok possesses a special license over all the music and sounds on the platform: in short, TikTok has licensing agreements that allow it to make the music available for everyone to use on their platform without the risk of infringing copyright laws.
Of course, this licensing has certain limitations – like the fact that business accounts have their own sounds and music catalog – but overall, they allow the regular everyday user to put sounds on their videos without worrying about infringing copyright laws.
Universal Music Group was one of the companies TikTok had a licensing agreement with. Universal’s catalog is not only HUGE, but it includes a lot of major artists like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Sting, The Weeknd, and Alicia Keys among others – you can see Universal’s full catalog HERE.
The Drama – What Happened?
It is all about money. According to an open letter published by Universal, the whole issue has been that they believe TikTok is not paying the artist fairly: TikTok accounts for only about 1% of Universal’s total revenue.
According to the same letter, they have been trying to negotiate with the platform for a better deal for artists as well as asking TikTok to deal with the hate speech, bigotry, bullying, and harassment on the platform and to protect the artists from AI to which TikTok responded negatively (according to Universal).
TikTok, on the other hand, affirms that Universal Music Group is greedy and puts its own interest before the artist’s interest. In a statement released by TikTok, they accuse Universal of using false narratives and rhetoric to justify themselves walking 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.
Since both giants were unable to agree on the terms or get to an acceptable middle point for both the Licensing Agreement was not renewed causing the removal of all of Universal’s music catalog once the old Licensing Agreement expired on January 31st.
The Consequences
What does this mean? For starters and at the very basic level, any video using any song from any Universal Music Group artist was muted. And no, it is not that they removed the song only – they removed the whole sound – any voice or talking happening over the music or videos that used the sound with no volume (for traction) were affected.
Businesses-wise, there is probably not much of an issue as the catalog of sounds for commercial use does not include any Universal Music songs, but influencers and personal profiles might be affected.
The great losers in this battle are artists.
Since the incident, the platform has been inundated with both: humor and complaints. While a lot of users are taking the matter with humor (special mention to the Jujutsu Kaisen fandom and the edits they are now making given all the JJK music WAS part of Universal) the small artists signed with Universal are suffering the consequences with some of them not having another place where to promote their music freely.
The Music Industry and TikTok
One thing is certain: the music industry will be the one most affected – particularly small and emerging artists that now have to come up with new ways to promote their music – like it or not, TikTok has become a key platform for music promotion, with countless artists using the app to reach new fans and build their brands.
According to Music Business Worldwide, 13 out of the 14 songs that were Number 1 on Billboard in the US in 2022 were driven to that spot by a viral trend on TikTok. The trend was very similar in the UK, with 10 out of 12 songs being driven by TikTok to the first place.
How would this affect the platform? We do not know yet. All that we have left is to wait and see how this unfolds. Do you think Universal and TikTok will get to an agreement at any point?
