Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish. These are all artists that many people have come to learn of and love from the social media platform, TikTok.
TikTok has been known as a platform for creators to promote their music and share it with their fans, but with the recent dissolution of the deal with Music Company Universal Music. Universal Music owns the licensing rights to many artists and they had a deal with TikTok, which had allowed the platform to showcase the music of the artists that Universal Music group owns the rights to.
However, this deal expired on January 31st, 2024, which meant that many songs were removed from the platform. Videos that had the songs were muted and a lot of artists on the platform who were a part of Universal Music had found themselves unable to share their music with their audience.
“I feel upset bro, it’s upsetting okay, it’s because you don’t get to hear one of your favorite artists, and it’s, I don’t know, I just feel sad,” says frequent user Melissa Salinas “It’s angering, it’s sad and it’s upsetting, and I can’t listen to Taylor Swift anymore on TikTok.”
“I’m very sad. TikTok was like my own little mini Spotify, and I would always sing songs that were on there. Now half of them are gone,” says senior Addison Leon. “Having to swipe on TikTok now and hear the same songs over and over again is kind of annoying.”
There are also trends on TikTok, such as edits, which are compilations of clips that creators edit to make aesthetic and/or cool by adding effects to the edit they have made. With these edits, the main thing is using music to invoke a stronger reaction from the viewers.
A lot of previous editors had used music which is now muted due to the copyright issues with Universal Music Group, and because of this, many of these editors have started to rely on many of the same songs for their edits, leading to a far more repetitive experience in watching these videos.
Universal Music Group had recently come out with a statement about this. There has been issues regarding the payment of the Artists, and Tiktok has not been providing the artists with a reasonable payment.“Ultimately TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music.” Universal Music Group goes on to state that “TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue.” The issue regarding monetary compensation is clearly not agreed upon, and this is one of the larger issues in the fact that there has been no new deal.
Besides the unjust compensation, there has been a large increase in AI covers of songs on TikTok, and even creating tools that support AI. Universal Music Group explains the issue, saying “And then demanding a contractual right which would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that is nothing short of sponsoring artist replacement by AI.”
With the use of AI covers, Tiktok has been far more saturated with these songs instead of the original songs, and this ends up harming the original artists of the cover song. More often than not, the creators of the tiktok will not credit the artist and the song they used to make an AI cover of, and this leads to the artist having to compete with their own song for recognition.
Unfortunately, until TikTok finds a way to resolve this issue, a vast majority of artists and their songs would not be able to be heard on the platform due to the lack of a deal being agreed on.
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