Why is UMG pulling music from TikTok? A contractual impasse causes videos to go silent
Universal Music Group and TikTok are at a contractual impasse. The record label has pulled its artists' music off the app.
You can hear it in the silence. Dozens of songs by artists including Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Kendrick Lamar have been stripped from TikTok.
It’s the result of a very public contractual impasse between Universal Music Group (known as UMG) and TikTok. Wednesday marked the expiration of UMG and TikTok’s licensing agreement. Now, the music label — one of the largest in the world — has followed through with threats to pull its artist’s songs from the popular platform. Meanwhile, TikTok says the move is charged by greed.
Here’s what you should know.
Why is UMG pulling music from TikTok?
In an open letter titled “Why We Must Call Time Out on TikTok” and published Tuesday, UMG said the groups were at a stalemate on appropriate compensation for artists and songwriters, protecting artists from AI, and online safety for TikTok users. The group’s contract with TikTok expired Wednesday.
As of Thursday morning, songs by the label’s artists, including Taylor Swift, were removed from the platform.
What is UMG saying about TikTok?
UMG said that TikTok accounts for “about 1% of our total revenue” and that the platform was proposing to pay “a fraction of the rate” other major social platforms pay. It criticized TikTok for “allowing the platform to be flooded” with AI-generated recordings. Last year, dozens of AI-generated songs mimicking UMG (and other) artists, including Drake and Ariana Grande, sparked curiosity and criticism.
UMG said TikTok “makes little effort” to moderate or de-escalate harmful content — ranging from infringement, to cyberbullying and hate speech, to the removal of “problematic content (such as pornographic deepfakes of artists).”
“Ultimately, TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music,” UMG said in the letter.
It marks a significant shift from three years ago, when UMG announced its global agreement with TikTok, calling it “equitable” and “exciting.” Now, the label says TikTok is trying to “bully” it into a deal worth less than their past contract. The group said it would no longer license content to the platform and pull its existing music from it.
How has TikTok responded?
In its own statement, TikTok called the events “sad and disappointing.”
The statement said UMG was walking 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.”
According to TikTok, the platform reached “artist-first agreements” with “every other label and publisher.”
In July, TikTok and Warner Music Group announced a “multi-year, multi-product deal.” The platform also announced a deal with Sony Music Entertainment.
Has this happened before?
Sort of, but not to this extent. Though this appears to be the first time a label has publicly threatened to pull its songs off the app en masse, in 2022, UMG, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group banded together to ask TikTok to share its advertising revenue and increase the royalties it pays them for rights.
As Bloomberg reported at the time, the groups were weighing how to “increase their payouts without getting into a public dispute with one of their most important partners.”
Which artists are under UMG?
Major artists signed by UMG include Taylor Swift, SZA, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo, Bad Bunny, Harry Styles, Adele, Justin Bieber, Elton John, U2, Post Malone, Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, Brandi Carlile and many, many more.
Now that UMG has moved forward with pulling its artist’s music, TikTok’s billions of users are unable to post videos with soundtracks by some of their favorite artists.
“Like you, I have read the news about the UMG catalog being taken off TikTok,” UMG indie artist Noah Kahan said.
Kahan — whose music rose to popularity on TikTok and is up for a Grammy award this year for Best New Artist — added, “So my songs aren’t gonna be on there anymore. I won’t be able to promote my songs on there anymore. But luckily, I’m not a TikTok artist — right?” His eyes widened. “I’ll probably be OK, right? I’ll land on my feet, right?”
What does this mean for content creators?
Besides not being able to use UMG songs in new posts, thousands of videos that had already used those artists’ songs had their audio stripped, causing a snowball effect for the platform’s content creators.
“We recognize the challenges that TikTok’s actions will cause, and do not underestimate what this will mean to our artists and their fans who, unfortunately, will be among those subjected to the near-term consequences of TikTok’s unwillingness to strike anything close to a market-rate deal and meaningfully address its obligations as a social platform,” UMG said in its open letter.
“But we have an overriding responsibility to our artists to fight for a new agreement under which they are appropriately compensated for their work, on a platform that respects human creativity, in an environment that is safe for all, and effectively moderated.”
Creator Alex Pearlman, who is based in the Philly suburbs and goes by @Pearlmania500 on TikTok, made a TikTok on Tuesday night warning users to back up their important videos.
“Those could be important videos to you,” he said. “Those could be extreme life videos — remember trying to dance your way through the pandemic? Or maybe it’s an engagement video … go download them as soon as possible.”
He added that “this is the beginning of the big changes that are going to begin happening on this app.”