Mateja
RebeccaHave you noticed lately that the music of artists such as The Weeknd, Drake, and Billie Eilish has been disappearing from TikTok?
The music of certain authors has been withdrawn from TikTok after a dispute with the leading music company, Universal Music Group (UMG).
It is a company that markets the music of some of the biggest artists in the world.
UMG removed their artist catalog from the app after failing to sign a license agreement with TikTok.
Taylor Swift’s owned music catalogue has returned to TikTok, due to her owning the publishing rights to her albums that have been created since 2019. pic.twitter.com/tf7AJsdTxb
— Pop Base (@PopBase) April 11, 2024
On the platform, users liked to add snippets of popular songs by famous artists to their videos.
This ensured more views.
Users can’t do this anymore. In fact, music licensed under UMG has been removed from videos that have already been published.
The videos can still be viewed, but silently – with a disclaimer that it has been muted due to copyright restrictions.
The dispute began when UMG demanded payment for artists whose music was played on TikTok. The platform disagreed and tried to blackmail UMG by removing the music of some of its lesser known artists.
It is not known which contractors were affected, but the deal fell through. Thus UMG imposed a ban on the use of all their music.
When UMG did this, the ban pointed out another problem on TikTok – it has a lot of videos created by artificial intelligence.
TikTok estimates that 30% of all popular songs could be lost, but experts say as much as 80% of the music on TikTok could be muted.
Experts predict that TikTok’s future is in sound clips.
Glossary
A license agreement allows the licensee to use part or all of someone else’s work, like artwork and music. The contract details who, what, where, when, and how the creative work can be used and for how much.
Points to Consider
- Why can’t everyone use original music?
- Have any of your videos been muted?
- Will this make TikTok less interesting?
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The original version of this article was published on 26th April.
