Universal Music Group Plans To Take Down Catalog From TikTok

Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents popular artists such as Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, Alicia Keys, Drake, and many more, says it will be taking down its music from TikTok. This decision comes after the leading music company failed to negotiate a royalties deal with the social media platform’s parent company, ByteDance, according to TechCrunch.

The current agreement that UMG has with TikTok won’t continue and is set to expire tonight, Jan. 31. UMG plans to stop licensing content to TikTok and its music-focused service, TikTok Music.

TikTok, which reported a turnover of $20 billion in ad revenue last year, was accused in a press release by UMG of trying to build a “music-based business, without paying fair value for [artists’] music.”

The record label wrote: “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay.” It added, “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.”

The social media platform didn’t respond to this accusation when asked for a comment initially, however, later in the day, a spokesperson emailed the following statement: “It’s sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters. Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent. TikTok has been able to reach ‘artist-first’ agreements with every other label and publisher. Clearly, Universal’s self-serving actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters and fans.”

According to the press release, UMG’s account of the situation is that both companies couldn’t come to a common agreement with regard to payments for AI-generated recordings using UMG properties. To add to this, TikTok wasn’t taking the relevant steps to quickly remove content that was in breach of the label’s copyright guidelines.