Who’s content is it anyway? TikTok, Universal Music Group highlight gap

Since February 1st TikTok users will pick up that some of their content has prompted them to select a different song choice.

This will be happening a lot more in the coming weeks as TikTok tries to find its footing after its fallout with Universal Music Group, one of the world’s largest music companies.

Universal Music Group has been in talks with TikTok over music license terms arguing that TikTok has been benefiting off certain song choices with little return.

This led to a back and forth that let the partnership severed as the music group confirmed it would be pulling its music including Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Drake, and many other artists from TikTok due to their license agreement expiring.

Add an expiring license agreement on top of a questionable relationship and you have users being the ones left with egg on their faces.

Why did Universal pull music from TikTok?

TikTok users woke to find that searches of the artist Taylor Swift among others led to no results on the platform. This means some music that came from the Universal stable was removed from TikTok.

While TikTok and Universal battled to agree on certain points to the licensing agreement, it was interesting to see that compensation for artists and songwriters, protection of artists from harmful effects of A.I among other things were the reason their paths separated.

This means certain artists names will be off the platform until a new agreement is made.

In the meantime, TikTok will be allowing users to change music to their content in an effort to retain as many users considering how Universal was a massive contributor to TikTok’s growth.

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