Following the breakdown of discussions to renew license arrangements this week, Universal Music Group (UMG) has begun removing the music catalogs of artists it represents from TikTok, including Taylor Swift, Drake, and Olivia Rodrigo. UMG and TikTok’s prior licensing arrangement came to an end on January 31st.
What has UMG accused tiktok of?
The record labels were concerned about adequate compensation for artists and songwriters, safeguards against AI-generated music, and online safety on the platform to protect artists from “hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment.” On Tuesday, UMG accused the video platform of trying to intimidate it into accepting a “bad deal”. When UMG “chose to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users”, TikTok retaliated, calling the record company selfish and placing “its own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
Even though TikTok artists accounted for eight out of ten of the most well-known bands and singers on the site last year, according to UMG, the platform only generates 1% of its advertising revenue. Roughly 60% of videos on TikTok have music in them.
In “Why We Must Call Time Out on TikTok”, an open letter to its artists, UMG stated: “In the end, TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music.”
“TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay,” UMG stated.
Tik Tok has also replied to UMG by a tweet:
Thus, it is to be seen how the popularity of tiktok will be impacted by this decision of UMG.
