This was announced by Universal Music Group (UMG), the record label that represents artists such as Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande will be removing his music from TikTok starting tonightafter an agreement could not be reached with the platform’s parent company, ByteDance Royalties.
UMG will not renew its current contract with TikTok, which expires on January 31, and will stop licensing content to both TikTok and its music-focused service TikTok Music.
UMG accuses TikTo of trying to create one “Businesses based on music without paying fair value for their music.” The company reportedly generated nearly $20 billion in advertising revenue last year.
TikTok has proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate paid by similar social platforms.
As an indicator of how much TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, today, despite its huge and growing user base, rapidly growing advertising revenue, and a growing reliance on music-based content, TikTok only accounts for about 1% of our total revenue.
TikTok shared this statement:
It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put its own greed above the interests of its artists and songwriters. Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is that they have chosen to move away from strong support for a platform with over a billion users that serves as a free vehicle to promote and discover their talent.
TikTok has signed “artist first” deals with every other label and publisher. Clearly, Universal’s selfish actions are not in the best interest of artists, songwriters and fans.
According to UMG, it has not agreed with TikTok on payments for recordings generated by artificial intelligence using UMG CONTENT. Additionally, according to UMG, TikTok did not take appropriate steps to quickly remove content that violated the label’s copyright.