TikTok vs. Universal Music Group

The big music industry drama unfolding this week, in a still developing conflict between Universal Music Group and TikTok, is over copyright, royalty payments and the coming AI storm.

In the last few days, contract renewal negotiations broke down in a public show of bad blood between the two corporate giants.

UMG accused TikTok of bullying, intimidation, and expressed frustration at ‘how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenue and increasing reliance on music-based content’ as well as ‘trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music.’

In response, TikTok said, ‘Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters. Despite Universal's false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk 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.’

All TikToks which feature UMG music have been silenced. The world’s biggest label is home to Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Harry Styles etc, and is seeking to position itself as the defender of artists’ rights.

While I don’t think that UMG’s intentions are entirely selfless, I do appreciate them standing up to what I consider to be one of the worst things to happen to music in a long time. The TikTokification of music.

Yes it’s very cool to see someone like Kate Bush top the charts, as ‘Running Up That Hill’ did last year. But overall, it’s net negative.

I hate that TikTok has become such an important part of the modern music industry. It has slow-creeping negative effects on how we listen to, engage with, and even create music. As a listener, it encourages an ADHD approach – the technological embodiment of the person who skips a song after thirty seconds. As an artist, signed to a label or not, the pressure to create a song that could go viral has led to the death of the intro, a general shortening of song length and a narrowing of creativity.

Labels have already been called out by some major artists including Halsey and Florence and the Machine, for begging/forcing/insisting on TikToks in the hope of going viral, in place of actually doing their job and marketing the music.

I don’t particularly like short form content and have never spent enough time on it to build a worthwhile following. But as I said just a few newsletters ago, this is what happens when you build your house on rented land. The rug (or floorboards, to continue the metaphor) can be ripped from under your feet. Sometimes, in this case, with just a day’s notice.

Hoping for your song to go viral on TikTok is like planning your life around a lottery win. Fun to daydream about, but realistically it’s just not going to happen. Prioritise a slow, organic growth of those thousand true fans instead. Build a community. Take good care of them, and they will take good care of you.

Mary x

(Independent Artist of the Week: Levy Dave from Kraków, Poland is releasing a series of short songs as part of what he calls his ‘miniature series’. Goofy Snowman is the latest track. I think this is a valuable lesson. Write, record, release, move on – don’t get hung up on perfectionism. Just create!)

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