UMG & TikTok Split To Result In Music Being Pulled From the Platform
Opening your TikTok only to find your favourite saved video without the music it was initially uploaded with could be the new reality with the latest development between the social media platform and international record label Universal Music Group (UMG).
On the 31st of January 2024, UMG issued a decisive open letter to its global village of songwriters and artists, detailing a “time out on TikTok.” In the statement, they said that, among other matters, the crux of the problem was that “TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music.”
“With respect to the issue of artist and songwriter compensation, TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay. Today, as an indication of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenue and increasing reliance on music-based content, TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue. Ultimately TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music.” UMG said in their open letter.
Read the full open letter here
As a result, due to unsuccessful negotiations between UMG and TikTok to broker a better deal in order move past the expiration of the current deal (set to end on the 31st of January 2024), the record label has resolved to pull music from the platform belonging to its artists.
UMG deciding upon moving aggressively against TikTok, according to the label, is to counter TikTok’s strategy of trying to “selectively remov[e] the music of certain of our developing artists, while keeping on the platform our audience-driving global stars.”
TikTok has been scathing in their response to the open letter, saying: “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters […] Clearly, Universal’s self-serving actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters, and fans.”
This means that music from the likes of South African signees such as Nasty C, TRESOR, Mi Casa, and Lady Zamar among others could no longer be available for usage on TikTok.