Between the Universal Music Group e TikTokonce “good friends”, a real battle broke out.
The Chinese platform, in fact, is eliminating all songs written by artists who are part of UMG, with an increasingly bitter battle for copyright. After the first skirmishes at the end of January, second Variety TikTok would have lost control over other UMG songs and authors.
The spokespersons of the social network, through an official statement, explained how the platform is satisfying UMG’s requests, with an impact also for artists and songwriters outside of the record label in question.
As already mentioned, a few weeks some content related to famous artists, from Taylor Swift a Olivia Rodrigo, had abandoned TikTok after an agreement was not reached to renew their music licensing contract. According to UMG, the other party offered a new agreement that was anything but advantageous.
Copyrights, peace doesn’t seem close between TikTok and UMG: an opportunity for YouTube?
Despite what has happened so far, TikTok is not closing the door to a possible last-minute deal.
At the same time, the social network tries to downplay the failure to sign a contract with UMG, claiming how “In the meantime, music lovers will be able to continue to enjoy, discover and share millions of songs from artists, songwriters and labels on TikTok, and we will continue to connect all artists – including those whose music is not currently available on our platform – with their fans“.
In the meantime, YouTube is trying to steal a slice of the market for this service by “wooing” i content creator who work with shortsoffering a functionality of remixes of music videos which, coincidentally, leverages songs related to the UMG catalogue.
TikTok, for its part, has instead shown that it wants to move in the opposite direction, with some initiatives aimed at promoting the creation of longer content.