The bruising battle over royalties between Universal Music Group and TikTok entered a new and more severe stage in the early hours of Tuesday as songs published by UMG began to be removed from the platform, Variety reported.
The standoff, which began earlier this month, initially saw recordings owned or distributed by UMG removed from the platform, but now is extending to a much larger number of songs by including those published by the company.
The situation, accompanied by a bellicose war of words from both sides, pits UMG — the world’s largest music company — against TikTok — the most influential platform for promoting music for the past five years — as they continue to fail to renew their licensing agreement, which expired on Jan. 31.
According to Variety, the reach of this latest move is broad, as it effects a vast number of recordings not issued by a UMG-owned label, and many artists who have collaborated with songwriters under contract to Universal Music Publishing Group. Videos featuring those songs must either be removed from the platform or have the music on them muted.
TechCrunch reported TikTok is losing even more songs over its quarrel with Universal Music Group (UMG), as the social media network is starting to remove songs published by UMG, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday.
According to TechCrunch, the row between the two companies began last month when UMG announced that it failed to reach a deal with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, over royalties. As a result, TikTok has to remove songs owned or distributed by UMG by January 31. Now, the company has to remove songs that contain compositions controlled by Universal Music Publishing Group.
TikTok says all songs that have been written or co-written by a songwriter signed to UMPG must be removed, and all videos that feature these songs must be muted. Videos that include impacted songs will still remain on the platform, but they won’t have any sound. The company says UMG and UMPG’s catalogue represents anywhere from 20-30% of popular songs on TikTok.
Mashable reported that Universal Music Group is back for more music. The music company will pull even more songs from TiKTok. At the beginning of the month, the deal between UMG and TikTok expired, and negotiations dissolved over royalties resulting in UMG removing all the music it owned or distributed from the platform.
Now, TikTok must take down all the songs controlled by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), which includes any song that a UMG signed-artist wrote or co-wrote.
According to Mashable, TikTok estimates that UMG and UMPG owns 20 to 30 percent of the popular music on the platform. When a song is removed from TikTok, all the videos previously containing the song go silent — resulting in an eerily quiet FYP.
In my opinion, the lack of music from UMG on TikTok is going to make the platform less engaging. Who wants to watch music videos that have been silenced?