On February 3 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper tragically died in a plane crash outside Mason City, Iowa shortly after take-off; this event came to be known as “the day the music died” thanks to Don McLean’s 1971 hit ‘American Pie’.
For younger music lovers who potentially have no idea who any of these men are, February 1, 2024 could be described as the day the music died, metaphorically speaking. That’s because the licensing deal between Universal Music Group, the largest record label in the world, and TikTok, expired on January 31, resulting in UMG pulling all of its music from a platform known in large part for its role in music discoverability and marketing.
Universal has issued a statement in which it outlined the key concerns that it felt TikTok had not sufficiently addressed: appropriate compensation for artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok’s users. They went so far as to accuse TikTok of “sponsoring artist replacement by AI”, although it should be noted that UMG isn’t entirely against AI itself; as The Verge explains, the company has partnered with YouTube to establish rules for AI music on the platform that are “safe and profitable for companies and performers alike.”
TikTok, for its part, issued a much shorter statement in response in which it said, “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” TikTok seems to have forgotten that its motives aren’t entirely altruistic either, but we move.
So how are things on TikTok a week on from this fairly seismic shift? Let’s dive in.
While many still think of TikTok as a dancing app, music has always played a major role on the platform, dating back to its days as lip syncing app Musical.ly. These days, a song can chart based almost entirely on its success on TikTok, which is why so many labels have been pushing their artists to try and use the app to promote their work. Many have done so successfully, seeing their songs go viral and rapidly climb the charts, while some unsigned artists managed to find such success on the app that they were scouted and signed after going viral (examples of this include Peach PRC, Katie Gregson-MacLeod and Armani White).
Ahead of the removal of all UMG music from TikTok, which included huge names like Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Olivia Rodrigo as well as smaller artists who are widely beloved on the platform like Noah Kahan, users were panicking: what will happen to our videos? What will happen to our fan edits? How will we create transition videos for Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour concerts without her music?
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Some people had interesting suggestions: thirst-trapping to royalty free music, or, my personal favourite solution, using the Glee versions of songs (one person jokingly suggested using KidzBop versions only to discover that they fall under the UMG umbrella and have thus been removed.) Others, particularly Swifties, created their own sounds, although at least one actual artist, bbno$, recreated their own music with a different backing track so it could still be used on TikTok, while Beabadoobee posted a video in which she said, “UMG took my music off so i guess 2x it is,” featuring her dancing to one of her own songs sped-up. Sophie Ellis Bextor, whose 2001 hit “Murder on the Dancefloor” has had a resurgence following its appearance in the final scene of Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, posted a video celebrating her song’s position at the top of the iTunes charts and singing a couple of lines a cappella since the song is no longer available on TikTok.
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While fans were worrying about being able to make fan edits of Pedro Pascal and Josh Hutcherson, many UMG artists were voicing their own concerns about being able to promote their music. Noah Kahan, who has found significant success thanks to TikTok, joked, “I’ll probably be okay, right? I’ll land on my feet, right?” Australian musician Peach PRC, who is incredibly popular on the platform, posted a video that read, “Me after Universal muted every single song I’ve ever created under them on the very platform they discovered and signed me from,” that featured her rocking back and forth. Peach also posted a video leaking her unreleased music so that UMG can’t mute it.
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Grace Gardner, a UMG artist from Philadelphia, posted a video in which she said, “All I am is a UMG artist with an EP coming out in 3 weeks, no way to promote it on this app, and a dream.” Tom Rosenthal also weighed in, writing, “No one in this shop knows that all my music has been muted because lots of people want to be richer,” while Bbno$ posted a short video sarcastically thanking UMG for removing his music from TikTok. James Marriott, who uses UMG as a distributor, posted a brand new ‘original song’ made just for TikTok in which he warbled, “Please fucking help me, I’ve got no way of naturally promoting my songs anymore, help me!”
American singer-songwriter Cody Fry posted a video about how successful his song “Things You Said” was on TikTok in China - at the end of January, it was one of the most popular sounds on the app, being used in over 760,000 videos on January 30th alone. Because Fry is a Universal Music artist, Fry’s music was removed from TikTok in the midst of this success, which he finds incredibly frustrating; he explains, “It’s the timing of it - I did the thing, I did what you’ve been hoping I would do” and says he feels like a person standing between two colliding planets and there’s nothing he can do. He adds that Universal didn’t ask him before pulling his music, and while he thinks that TikTok should pay artists more for using their music, “it’s just hard as a hardworking artist to see a budding viral trend with one of your songs get crushed by multi-billion dollar corporations.”
Gracie Abrams, who is signed to Universal-owned Interscope Records, weighs in on UMG’s decision to pull its music from TikTok: “I hope that they come to an agreement soon so that fans of music can have the music they want on the platform.” bit.ly/49EY2wr
Off TikTok, artists were also weighing in; at a Spotify event last week, Conan Gray, whose song “heather” blew up on TikTok in 2020, joked that his career was over; meanwhile, backstage at the Grammys, producer Jack Antonoff described the situation as “ass backwards” and added, “at the very least we should have known.” On the Grammys red carpet, Gracie Abrams gave a more diplomatic response, expressing her desire that the companies reach an agreement soon.
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Safe to say, many artists’ feelings towards this move by UMG aren’t straightforward, and I don’t doubt that many of them feel powerless and at the mercy of the two massive corporations fighting it out, with both parties claiming to be acting in their interests.
Some non-UMG artists are seeking a silver lining in all of this, namely how it can benefit them (this isn’t shade - trying to find success without the support of a major label is an uphill battle and you’ve got to do whatever you can!) Ktlyn, an independent artist, posted a video using her song “Big Mad” in which she said, “When UMG removes all their music from tiktok but ur an independent artist and now you might actually have a chance.” Meanwhile, former teen heartthrob Jacob Sartorious shared a post reassuring fans that his music was still available on TikTok. What a relief! Crisis averted, thanks Jacob.
Fans are feeling far more negative about the move. If things weren’t bad enough, people quickly discovered which songs had survived the purge, and the results were… not good. Survivors include “Cbat”, “Little Life” and “Love You So”, songs which many users feel have been used to death - “Love You So” has been used in over 32 million videos, for example, and is the most used sound on the platform.
Other sounds that survived include royalty free ones, including many by Kevin MacLeod. MacLeod is far from a household name, but anyone who has used TikTok will be familiar with his work; his hits include “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” and “Fluffing a Duck”. The former was already a TikTok staple, while the latter has seen an uptick in usage in the past week thanks to the purge.
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IM CRYING PEOPLE ARE MAKING EDITS TO COPYRIGHT FREE MUSIC 😭😭
Many users have had to improvise, dancing to songs like “Fluffing a Duck” and posting edits that make use of TikTok’s own sound that plays when it shows you people you may know. Jarred Jermaine, a creator with 5.6 million followers best known for his videos about music (he calls himself the “ceo of music and audio knowledge”), jokingly posted a video about changing his career path and pivoting to polling people on which fast food outlet has the best chicken, as well as a video crying in his car about all of the videos he had muted. Perhaps most apt is his video ranking the top 10 songs that have been removed from TikTok, including “Cruel Summer”, “Good 4 U”, “Blinding Lights” and “Another One Bites the Dust”.
Others have simply started using alternatives to their favourite songs, including sped-up versions, remixes, or simply just versions that have been uploaded by users unofficially and aren’t tagged by TikTok as containing snippets of any certain song. Even official accounts like those belonging to industry trades like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have adopted this approach, although it remains to be seen how long the sounds used in popular videos will remain unidentified and under-the-radar; I suspect that TikTok isn’t likely to work overtime to identify and remove UMG music when it doesn’t have to, however.
Some in the editor community - those who make fan edits like last year’s viral Pedro Pascal edit - have been particularly concerned about the impact this will have on them and their ability to post well-edited videos of celebrities. One editor I found had shared tips with her followers about how to get around the ban, including speeding songs up, or slowing them down by as little as 0.1x and pitch correcting - these won’t get picked up unless the artist has officially released sped-up or slowed down versions, although more and more artists are doing as much thanks to the popularity of such versions on TikTok.
Another popular TikToker, who isn’t in the edit community but is undoubtedly considered an ally after this video, shared an elaborate method of restoring sound to muted videos, something he had to learn after a video of his featuring Antonio Vivaldi’s Winter was muted because UMG owned the rights to that particular recording.
While there was much panic before and immediately after the purge on the part of TikTok users, a week on, things have settled somewhat - finding alternatives hasn’t been as difficult as people feared, we’re still in the adjustment phase where edits that use royalty-free music as a gimmick aren’t too annoying yet, and workarounds exist.
As artists themselves have feared, this move will inevitably hurt them more than anyone else. Their ability to promote their music is gone; native discoverability within the TikTok app is gone; the opportunity to make it big after going viral on TikTok is gone. Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick came to the same conclusion, writing earlier this week that it was “very likely that UMG’s TikTok pullout signals the start of a much more restrictive new status quo that could easily spread across the internet. One that, ironically enough, will hurt musicians the most.”
It remains to be seen whether UMG and TikTok will come to an agreement, or whether both parties will dig their heels in and refuse to budge as artists continue to stress about how to promote their music while being yelled at that they need to be doing more to market themselves by the very label preventing them from doing so on one of the major social media platforms used for discovering new music.
At least Kevin MacLeod is probably having a great week.
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