Fans of Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Billie Eilish, among others, will have especially noticed. Since Thursday, February 1, you sometimes suddenly no longer hear songs from these artists in videos on TikTok. Huh? This is due to a battle between Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok. UMG demands a fair price for the music rights from their stable. However, the deal is not yet successful.
UMG in conflict with TikTok
The social media platform TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is one of the most used apps today. Last year, around 2.5 million users were active on the platform every day, which is almost a million more than a year before. The platform is full of funny, inspiring videos, which are then accompanied by a song. Of course, all this music doesn’t just appear on TikTok. The social media channel pays money for the rights to the music. And a battle has now arisen over that money between record company Universal Music Group and TikTok. UMG believes that they do not receive enough for the music rights of artists from their stable. They demand a fair price for the music.
Unfortunately, the negotiations between UMG and TikTok failed. This was much to the disappointment of fans such as Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Billie Eilish. Their music has now been (temporarily) removed from the social media platform. As a result, you no longer hear sound in some videos. Users can adjust the sound for respective videos.
Music (temporarily) removed
TikTok is disappointed with UMG’s response, “which puts its own greed above the interests of its artists.” They call the social media platform important for discovering and promoting artists. In recent years they also proved that many songs have become more popular through the app. TikTok has reached an ‘artist-first’ agreement with other record labels and publishers.
UMG understands that removing their music from TikTok could have consequences for the artists concerned. However, they persevere and are happy to fight for fair conditions. By the way, people have been complaining about TikTok for some time and the fact that they do not pay a fair price for music rights. Still, many companies think it’s a step too far to actually remove songs from TikTok. For example, Warner Music Group and Sony Music have entered into new licensing agreements.
