Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and others may vanish from TikTok as licensing dispute boils over
Universal Music Group, which represents artists including Taylor Swift, Drake, Adele, Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish, says it will no longer allow its music on TikTok now that a licensing deal between the two parties has expired.
UMG said it has not agreed to the terms of a new deal with TikTok, and plans to stop licensing content from the artists it represents on the social media platform owned by ByteDance, as well as TikTok Music- services.
The licensing agreement between UMG and TikTok expires on Wednesday.
In a Tuesday letter to artists and songwriters, UMG said it had pressed TikTok on three issues: “appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for the users of TikTok.”
UMG said TikTok proposed paying its artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate paid by other major social platforms, adding that TikTok only makes up about 1% of its total revenue.
“Ultimately, TikTok is trying to build a music-based business without paying a fair price for the music,” UMG said.
TikTok has pushed back against UMG’s claims, saying it has entered into “artist-first” agreements with every other label and publisher.
“It is clear that Universal’s selfish actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters and fans,” TikTok said.
Yet Universal Music also called new technology a potential threat to artists and said TikTok is developing tools to enable, promote and encourage AI music creation. UMG accused the platform of “demanding a contractual right that would allow this content to vastly dilute the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that is nothing short of sponsoring the replacement of artists with AI.”
UMG also took issue with what it described as security issues on TikTok. UMG is unhappy with TikTok’s efforts to deal with what it says is hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment. It said removing disturbing content from TikTok is a “monumental cumbersome and inefficient process equivalent to the digital equivalent of ‘Whack-a-Mole’.
UMG said it proposed that TikTok take steps similar to what some of its other social media platform partners are using, but was met with first indifference and then harassment.
“As our negotiations continued, TikTok tried to bully us into accepting a deal that was worth less than the previous deal, far less than fair market value and that did not reflect their exponential growth,” UMG said. “How did it try to intimidate us? By selectively removing the music of certain of our emerging artists, while keeping our global star crowd-pleasers on the platform.”
However, TikTok said Universal Music is “putting their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”