after To do so, earlier this week Universal Music Group (UMG) began pulling the catalogs of Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish, The Weeknd and other artists it represents. There is no more traces mentioned in the profiles of the world’s most prominent artists.
In addition, UMG music featured in TikTok videos will be muted going forward, forcing creators to replace tracks with selections from other music labels. Given the plethora of lip-sync videos littering the social network, it won’t be easy for many of them.
Given that TikTok is a valuable marketing platform for its artists, this is a drastic move by Universal. However, UMG also has considerable leverage considering it is the world’s largest record label, featuring the most popular artists. Either way, it’s a blow to both the creators and users of the platform.
Universal previously said it wanted TikTok to pay a fraction of the rate paid by other social media sites: “As our negotiations continued, TikTok tried to bully us into accepting a deal that was much cheaper than the previous deal, much less than fair market. value and does not reflect their exponential growth.”
In response, he said TikTok serves as a valuable marketing tool for artists and publishers. “Despite Universal’s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact remains that they have chosen to walk away from the strong support of a platform with over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery tool for their talent.”
