Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents artists including Taylor Swift, Drake, Adele, Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish, announces that it will no longer license its music on TikTok now that a licensing agreement between the two parties has expired.
UMG explained that it had not agreed to the terms of a new deal with TikTok and planned to stop licensing content from artists it represents to the ByteDance-owned social media platform, as well as TikTok Music services.
The licensing agreement between UMG and TikTok expired on Wednesday.
In a letter sent Tuesday to artists and songwriters, UMG claims to have pressured TikTok on three issues: “appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protection of human artists against the harmful effects of artificial intelligence and the online safety of TikTok users”.
UMG said TikTok offers to pay its artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of what other major social platforms pay, adding that TikTok only represents about 1% of its total revenue.
“Ultimately, TikTok is trying to create a business based on music, without paying fair value for music,” the group concludes.
TikTok pushed back against UMG’s criticism, saying it had artist-first deals with all other record labels.
“Clearly, Universal’s selfish actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters and fans,” TikTok said.
However, Universal Music also called new technologies a threat to artists and argued that TikTok was developing tools to enable, promote and encourage music creation through artificial intelligence. UMG accused the platform of “demanding a contractual right that would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that is nothing less than sponsoring the replacement of artists by the artificial intelligence “.
UMG also took issue with what it described as security issues on TikTok. UMG is unhappy with TikTok’s efforts to combat what it sees as hate speech, bigotry, bullying and harassment. He said removing troubling content from TikTok is an “extremely cumbersome and inefficient process that amounts to the digital equivalent of ‘Whack-a-Mole’.”
UMG says it proposed to TikTok that it take steps similar to those used by some of its other social media platform partners, but that it was met at first with indifference, then with intimidation.
“As our negotiations continued, TikTok attempted to intimidate us into accepting a deal worth less than the previous deal, well below fair market value, and not reflective of their exponential growth,” UMG argued .
“How did he try to intimidate us? By selectively removing music from some of our emerging artists, while keeping our audience-attracting global stars on the platform. »
TikTok, however, said Universal Music puts “its own greed ahead of the interests of its artists and songwriters.”