How UMG’s Music Removal on TikTok Is Affecting The Users and Artists
Should TikTok do a renegotiation with UMG?
On January 30, 2024, Universal Music Group (UMG) announced its decision to stop its contract with TikTok due to unmet negotiations on its licensing contract renewal. In an open letter that UMG posted on their website, they boldly state that TikTok responded to their proposal on three issues, one of which regarding inappropriate compensation for their artists and songwriters, with intimidation. Two days later, UMG started to pull their songs from TikTok.
Answering the open letter, TikTok claimed that UMG created a false narrative and rhetoric regarding the agreement and put their own greed above the interest of their artists and songwriters. We might be unable to know the truth about what is really happening between them. Even so, from a user perspective, this issue is definitely impacting the platform’s experience.
TikTok and Its Uniquenes (and Controversy)
TikTok has broken the competitive social media market by offering a unique proposition: a video-based social media that uses music as its charm. With this social media environment, it has surpassed Instagram’s worldwide active users within 4 years. It is actually funny to think that many people, including me, thought TikTok was a place for tacky people. But guess what, who is on TikTok now? It seems that people have more time during the pandemic to create videos and get hooked by it up until now.
For TikTok, music is its soul. The songs are engaging its users, pretty much intendedly, since the algorithm will boost content that uses songs that are popular on the platform. Many artists, especially the new ones, benefit from TikTok algorithm because their songs can be well-known after being widely used by the creators on the platform. People used to discover new music from radio and TV, and now they find it on TikTok.
However, there are some pros and cons to how TikTok implements this feature. Despite the benefit of their songs being recognized by a broad of users, many artists and record labels consider copyright infringement to happen on this platform. Creators can use copyrighted songs freely for commercial purposes, even edit and mix them with other songs. That way, artists might not get the appropriate compensation that they should have.
No UMG Music? You Still Got Uncopyrighted Songs To Dance To
As dance is one of TikTok’s popular content types, many users are sad because they cannot dance to their favorite songs anymore. Some of them even teased UMG by creating TikTok dance content with uncopyrighted songs.
When Your Strength Sourced From External Partners, You Should Treat Them Right
UMG is a music corporation with major and iconic labels, such as Republic Records, Universal Music, and Interscope Records. It’s the home of almost every famous pop star, such as Taylor Swift and Rihanna. Its contract break with TikTok means almost all popular songs will be gone from the platform, and it definitely impacts the users and the UMG artists. Not only can they not use UMG songs for their future content, but their posted content that uses UMG songs is also impacted — the embedded music is also taken out.
Basically, UMG and TikTok partnership is really a win-win for them. UMG gets exposure for its songs and TikTok gets engagement from users and advertising revenue from brands. In fact, there are many new artists signed to UMG because of being discovered through TikTok. This contract termination means both of them losing their strengths.
TikTok should reconsider UMG’s demands because this issue might also causing a domino effect to another record labels who might low-key having the same concern with UMG. If TikTok doesn’t have the intention to restructure the commissions for the artists after UMG contract termination, there is a bigger risk coming on later: another termination with the other labels.
On the other side, UMG should also consider adjusting their demands to TikTok because UMG artists rely on this platform to market their new and even old songs. I feel bad for the artists after I learned that UMG unilaterally made this major decision without give a prior notice to their artists. This is also ironic because, again, many of them were discovered through TikTok.
Maybe This is The Time for Independent Artists to Rise.. or Not?
The renegotiation process might take months or even years to be done. That is why TikTok should consider alternatives to empower its current strength.
Since the rise of YouTube, independent artists started to easily get their audience. Soundcloud, Spotify, and TikTok were following to be their heroes. Therefore, I think TikTok could empower these independent artists to further grow the platform.
However, I later found that this contract issue is also impacting independent artists whose works are co-worked with UMG-signed artists. To this level, I think there are no alternatives. UMG and TikTok really have to review this issue as it’s hurting these unaffiliated musicians.
If you’re using TikTok, let me know what you think in the comment section! Does it really changed after UMG pull out its songs?
Stay connected,
Annisa
