Why Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga’s music could disappear from TikTok

The girls are fighting, and the “girls” in question are two of the largest media companies in the world.

On Monday, Universal Music Group (UMG) – a leading music publishing company for artists like Taylor Swift – released a statement threatening to pull its music from the social media platform TikTok. According to UMG, its contract with TikTok expires on Wednesday and the social media platform’s leaders have failed to negotiate a contract that properly compensates artists and addresses other concerns. Now, the collapse of contract negotiations has the potential to impact UMG’s hundreds of musicians and songwriters TikTok’s 1 billion users.

For now, the situation appears to still be in flux. We will update this story as more information emerges. However, it currently appears that globally popular artists – such as Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny – will officially pull their music from the platform. Here’s everything you need to know about the contract between TikTok and Universal Music Group.

Why is Universal Music Group pulling its music from TikTok?

This whole issue comes into play because of one key factor: UMG’s contract with TikTok expires on January 31st. We do not know the depth or exact terms of this contract, or others like it – these contracts are kept as confidential agreements between companies – but we at least understand that the document contains contractual obligations that determine numbers such as royalties. The contract expiration date has arrived and the two companies have been unable to reach an agreement. UMG made its concerns about the contract negotiations public in a press release statement criticizing TikTok.

Honestly? UMG higher sound angry. In an open letter released Tuesday discussing the fallout from the contract negotiations, the company described three key issues in the contract negotiations: compensation for musicians and writers, protections for artists regarding the use of AI, and the online safety of TikTok users in general. While the statement addresses each concern point by point, the larger story it paints is one in which TikTok has grown and benefited from the work of musicians, and has now failed to strike a deal that adequately protects artists and songwriters pays for their contributions.

According to UMG, TikTok’s success “is based in large part on the music created by our artists and songwriters.” Despite this success, UMG says TikTok proposed paying its singers and songwriters “at a rate that is a fraction of what major social platforms pay in similar situations.” While UMG doesn’t provide examples of these rates, it does say that TikTok only accounted for 1% of the company’s total revenue. So the general idea is that UMG doesn’t benefit from a social media company that has grown in recent years thanks in part to its music.

The statement addresses the above point, but also touches on other concerns regarding the way TikTok operates its platform. UMG said TikTok is “inundated with AI-generated recordings,” and UMG’s statement further details how TikTok has developed tools that enable, promote and encourage AI music creation on the platform. According to UMG, this “vastly dilutes the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that is nothing short of sponsoring the replacement of artists with AI.”

The letter then gets to a larger point about TikTok’s inability to moderate its platform. The UMG statement says TikTok is making “little effort to deal with the massive amounts of content on its platform that infringes on our artists’ music,” in addition to inadequately moderating “the tidal wave of hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment in the workplace”. platform.” If all this wasn’t enough, the strongly worded statement takes one last major swipe at TikTok by accusing it of bullying UMG into getting a worse deal by “selectively restricting the music of certain of our developing remove artists while our audience remains on the platform.” -powering world stars.”

What is TikTok’s response to Universal Music Group?

Photo illustration: Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

TikToks response to the matter was curt compared to UMG’s letter. The company’s statement said it is “sad and disappointing that UMG has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” According to TikTok, UMG has chosen to walk away from a platform that “serves as a free promotional and discovery tool for their talent.” The company also said it “has been able to enter into artist-first agreements with every other label and publisher.”

Which musicians are being taken off TikTok?

UMG represents hundreds of musical acts worldwide. You can browse a catalog of musicians and songwriters on its website; the list includes major acts like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Rosalía and Lady Gaga. All of these musicians will be removed from TikTok if the two companies cannot reach an agreement.

What does this mean for TikTok users?

It is important to emphasize that nothing is final – not yet. We don’t know exactly what time the contract will expire, or whether there is a grace period to take into account ongoing negotiations; It’s possible the two companies could reach a last-minute deal after making the disagreement public. Polygon checked and TikTok still features several songs from UMG artists at the time of publication. However, when the contract expires on January 31 – most likely at midnight – UMG will pull its catalog from TikTok.

Photo: Buda Mendes/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

We don’t know how long it would take to make such a change on TikTok’s side since UMG represents so many artists on the platform. Theoretically, if UMG pulls TikTok’s entire catalog and demands that the social media platform enforce this change, users will no longer be able to use officially licensed recordings on the platform to create videos. If a previously published video on TikTok originally used the official recording for a deleted song, the video will likely have no sound and be silent – ​​as is the case with other videos that have had songs or sounds removed in the past.

To give you an example of the impact this could have: the official recording for Taylor Swift’s song “Karma‘ has been used more than 102,000 times on TikTok. If the contract doesn’t go through, all those videos can remain silent afterward. All this being said, there are a lot of unlicensed recordings of songs that are constantly going viral on the platform. So you can still hear your favorite Taylor Swift song, but it will be less frequent and subject to a DMCA notice if the original uploader is caught.

Overall, it’s a mess of a situation. It’s hard to imagine TikTok without music from some of the world’s most popular artists. Taylor Swift and other artists have become a global phenomenon in no small part thanks to the fandoms that grew on platforms like TikTok. Only time will tell how this all plays out and what the ultimate impact will be.