The Breakup of the Central
Have you noticed that the world is suddenly a lot quieter?
Many people discovered that one of the most popular types of videos on TikTok is disappearing. Many fans who want to create dance riffs of their favourite artists are finding that they can’t use the music of these artists as background music.
What is going on?
Universal music group UMG — the music publishing company representing music giants like Taylor Swift, BTS, and Justin Bieber- is battling copyright protection with TikTok. The war has been going on silently for months and has finally turned into fire.
UMG’s recent deal with TikTok expired on Jan. 30. The next day, UMG started to remove their recorded music from the platform. According to Billboard, after a 30-day grace period, UMG will also require TikTok to remove any song that Universal Music Publishing Group (UMG) controls any rights to. Songs with writing credits from creators under UMG and even songs that sample compositions by UMG songwriters. In some markets, this could account for nearly 60% of the music used on the platform.
“TikTok is allowing the platform to be flooded with AI-generated recordings…and then demanding a contractual right which would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists.”
It is all blamed on AI
The source of this war is due to the fact that TikTok encourages users to use music produced by generative AI. User of TikTok creates cover version using other artists’ voice through generative AI. I have saw TikTok of Taylor swift singing Charlie Puth’s Attention. The freedom of making music by generative AI on TikTok gives users a creative environment that helps them accomplish their fantasies about artist collaborations. Creating cover songs through generative AI became the most popular content on TikTok.
On AI, TikTok is allowing the platform to be flooded with AI-generated recordings — as well as developing tools to enable, promote and encourage AI music creation on the platform itself — and then demanding a contractual right which would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that is nothing short of sponsoring artist replacement by AI.
This reduces the platform’s spending on music licensing and threatens the interests of artists and UMG. Not just the money on music copyright but also the power of being creative with their legacy artists. Using AI to edit the artist’s voice allowed the company to create songs or video content from legacy artists who may no longer be alive.
The legendary band Beatles released a new song on Nov 2023 that shocked the world. The song was originally from a tape in the 1970s that John Lennon remains unfinished. The Beatles Anthology project tried to rebuild the song for years but failed. Peter Jackson and his team developed a software system finally opened the way for the uncoupling of John’s vocal from his piano part.
In many years, social media is the bridge which artists can connects with audiences. Social Media helped unlabeled artists having a chance to be seen by public. The platform also needs music contents to be more diversity. The war seems to have no winner. No one benefits from it. The future appears blurred. However, TikTok users has already come up with new ideas to play with music that been left. People started to edit dance video with copyright free music and sharing the contrast on TikTok.
