It came as a shock to me when my daughter asked, rhetorically, in our kitchen the other morning: "Can you believe that TikTok aren't playing any of Taylor Swift's music?" As a general rule of thumb, if there is a legal dispute in the news that my eldest daughter has even the feintest knowledge of, then it must be big news.
She was of course, referring to the current dispute between TikTok and Universal Music Group ("UMG"), over the relatively small licence fee (compared to other social media platforms) which TikTok is willing to pay for use of UMG's music on its platform. When UMG pulled out of negotiations between the parties over the level of the licence fee, it also pulled all of its music from TikTok. Given that UMG is home to a number of major artists, including Ms Swift, Harry Styles, Adele and Ariana Grande, the fallout has had a big impact on TikTok users. Not only have songs from these artists been removed as "sounds" (which can provide the musical soundtrack to users' content), but they have also been removed from the artists' own accounts.
As you would expect, UMG did not hold back in its announcement following their drastic move, stating: "Today, as an indication of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenue and increasing reliance on music-based content, TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue.Ultimately TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music."
In response, TikTok also accused UMG of greed: "It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters. Despite Universal's false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk 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. TikTok has been able to reach 'artist-first' agreements with every other label and publisher. Clearly, Universal's self-serving actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters and fans."
While there does not appear to be a resolution in sight, the average TikTok user may be forgiven for thinking that the parties had resolved their differences. This is because, there are (of course) ways in which TikTok users have successfully (so far) been able to get round UMG's attempts to strip out its artists' music, by either ripping the songs from other sources, using sped up/slowed down versions of the tracks or by performing/using cover versions. This itself may lead to consequential disputes over copyright infringement, mirroring a recent dispute between UMG and YouTube over the presence on the latter, of AI-generated vocals that sound like Drake and The Weeknd. In that dispute, YouTube gave in to UMG's complaints and the offending music was removed.
Originally published 13 March 2024
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