TikTok got a little quieter over the first weekend of February.
No worries, all the dancing teens and cute animals are still there, but a big chunk of the popular music backing up their adorable antics is gone.
Universal Music Group pulled the songs of artists such as Ariana Grande, SZA, Elton John, and Taylor Swift from the video platform, citing an ‘creators first’ type approach to their decision.
“TikTok still argues that artists should be grateful for the ‘free promotion’ and that music companies are ‘greedy’ for expecting them to simply compensate artists and songwriters appropriately, and on similar levels as other social media platforms currently do,” said a UGM representative to Gael Cooper of Cnet.
In a response to UGM’s initial statement on their falling out, TikTok fired back hard with a short, scathing letter, saying: “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters…Clearly, Universal’s self-serving actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters and fans.”
Yeesh. Even I don’t know where I land on this—big artists and the big companies backing them aren’t exactly hurting for money, and it can be argued that their art helped make the platform in a way that nothing else could. However, the more a song bounces around, the more people get to know an artist and get to buy (the streaming rights to) their music.
And where does all that leave you?
There’s nothing I love more than watching big corporations fight each other, but this bout in particular has a lot of content pushers catching stray shots. What do you do when your capitalization on a multimedia trend starts missing a medium? It’s already hard enough to balance your socials with information, relevance, and some semblance of taste—no one needed to add ‘Check artist affiliation’ to their list of to dos before hitting that editorial calendar.
And even though it’s UGM today, contracts expire. There’s no telling when it’ll be Sony Music duking it out with Meta or Virgin Records having beef with TwitteX.
Where does that leave your personal or professional presence as far as dodging the debris of these corporate kaiju battles?
Hopefully checking out your local music scene for music yet un-memed? It might sound huffy and elitist, but giving creative credit where it’s due and utilizing independent music, or even purchasing rights from online composers will protect you from the fallout while the bigwigs are slapping at each other.
‘Couldn’t we just use AI for that?’, you might be asking. Ask this as well—’If Warner Music came after me for profiting from ripping off their artists’ style, would I survive in court for even a minute?’
For now, go back through and add music from a different label where UGM’s was subtracted, or archive accordingly. Then get your plans in order for when this happens again.
Audio Jungle is still kicking. Welcome to it. It’s gonna bring you sound.
You can't spell "Together" without TGOT: That Goth Over There. Staff Writer, April Bingham, is that goth; and she's all about building bridges— both metaphorically between artistry and entrepreneurship, and literally with tools she probably shouldn't be allowed to learn how to use.
