The standoff between music publishing giant Universal Music Group and TikTok, the in-vogue social media juggernaut, persists nearly a month after the licensing agreement between the two expired.
It’s not clear where the two companies – UMG maintains operational headquarters at a Santa Monica campus, while TikTok counts its Culver City office as part of its headquarters – are regarding working out a new deal, and most industry players are being quiet for now, presumably waiting to see what develops. UMG has publicly demanded better pay for its artists – names such as Taylor Swift, SZA, Elton John and Kendrick Lamar – whose music often plays a key role in successful TikTok videos. Meanwhile, TikTok accused the publisher of being greedy and willing to sacrifice the exposure provided to musicians as their songs go viral on cellphones around the world.
Some experts think TikTok should pony up and offer money comparable to the payouts from Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, or Alphabet, which owns YouTube, to those labels and their artists.
“For a long time, TikTok has said they’re helping artists by promoting their business,” said Karen North, a professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism who studies digital and social media. “If they were a nonprofit, that’s fine, but they make tremendous amounts of money. And the creators, TikTok shells out enormous amounts of money for them, and they are making their livings by using other peoples’ music.
“While they’re paying the creators,” she added, “they should be paying the people making the music.”
As the fight drags on, one question to ask is what UMG has to gain – or to lose – from drawing its line and sticking to it. On one hand, that’s money that UMG’s artists have for the moment stopped collecting; on the other, the label can at least position itself as fighting on behalf of its artists.
“I don’t know that it’s that bad for Universal….
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