On Tuesday, one day before its licensing contract with TikTok was set to expire, Universal- the largest of the three most prominent recording companies including Sony and Warner- published a targeted open letter accusing the social media platform of offering unsatisfactory payment for the use of the label’s music, and of allowing its app to be “flooded with A.I.-generated recordings” that minimizes the royalty pool for human artists.
Videos on TikTok began to go silent on early Thursday, following a week of tumultuous licensing negotiations between the app and Universal Music Group that eventually led to their contract dissolving.
The massive record company is signed with artists such as Taylor Swift, Drake, U2, and Ariana Grande.
TikTok, an app where users upload short videos that often have music audios attached to them, is an integral promotional medium for the music industry- as it has the power repopularize old songs, spread new ones at a fast rate, and introduce users to artists they may never have discovered without the app.
However, Universal is one of various other music companies that have had a conflict with a tech media platform as a consequence of their growing influence in the industry pitted against the record company’s desires for control and compensation.
As a result of the deal being broken, any videos with songs by artists under the Universal label attached to them now have no audio, and contain a note at the bottom saying “This sound isn’t available,” or “Sound removed due to copyright restrictions.”
Additionally, official profiles for Universal musicians such as Swift and Grande no longer display their discography from which users could pick songs to add to their own videos. Instead, the pages were either entirely bare or reduced to a handful of brief snippets.
The extent to which this update will affect the app is still unclear, as some videos using Universal recordings have yet to be altered. A spokeswoman for TikTok did not clarify an estimate of how many videos will be affected by the changes.
In a response to Universal on Tuesday, TikTok accused the music company of putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters,” and claimed that Universal had “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.”
As of Thursday, representatives of Universal and TikTok have yet to comment on the outcome of their negotiations or the withdrawal of music from the app.
Now it is a waiting game to see whether the music corporation will cave and give the social media platform back the rights its artist’s songs, or if it will stand strong on its decision to fight back against the increasing domination of mediums like TikTok in the industry.
