Who will blink first in TikTok and UMG’s Mexican standoff?
There’s a huge variety of content on TikTok, but the social network has become synonymous with videos of people (mainly young women and girls) lip-synching and dancing to their favorite artists (mainly Taylor Swift).
But in February, the world’s largest record label, Universal Music Group (UMG), took the decision, after many attempts to negotiate with ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to take away all of its music from it. The result was immediate: hundreds of thousands of videos using UMG-licensed music went silent, and as those of us who regularly make presentations know, a video without sound can be, well, devastatingly silent. Suddenly, no Taylor Swift, Drake, Bad Bunny or countless other artists were heard on TikTok anymore.
The label explained the reasons for its decision in what seemed like a bid to force ByteDance’s hand and get it to sit down and talk… but it’s been a month now, and what’s happened? Tune in to TikTok and you’ll find videos of users making their own music, acting out clips from movies, telling jokes, and a range of other…
