tech
Page: 22
UnitedMasters has reached a new multi-year licensing agreement with TikTok. News of the deal comes just weeks after Billboard broke the news that TikTok “walked away” from talks to renew its license with Merlin, a collective that negotiates digital licensing deals for more than 30,000 indie labels and distributors.
Instead, TikTok noted that it wished to forge deals with most of the labels and distributors individually and cited previous issues with Merlin’s members delivering “fraudulent content” as the reason why they were not renewing with Merlin. Merlin read this move as TikTok “fragmenting” its membership to try to “minimize” licensing payments for indie music.
UnitedMasters — which has worked with more than 2 million independent artists, including FloyyMenor, Brent Faiyaz, BigXthaPlug, Tobe Nwigwe and Anycia — will include its full, expansive catalog in the new deal. The agreement will also provide additional commercial opportunities for UnitedMasters artists via TikTok’s Commercial Music Library.
Trending on Billboard
A press release states that TikTok and UnitedMasters “share the vision and understanding that commercial use of music on platforms offers significant revenue and promotional opportunities for artists” — and that having access to TikTok’s Commercial Music Library will give UnitedMasters talent access to new revenue and promotional streams for their talent.
Beyond just TikTok, licensing music for commercial purposes is a crucial focus for UnitedMasters. Previously, it has landed its artists deals with major brands like Bose, Walmart, ESPN, Coca-Cola, IKEA, Dove and more.
“Our partnership with TikTok provides UnitedMasters artists unparalleled access to a vast global audience, while TikTok creators and users gain early exposure to some of the most impactful independent music today,” said Steve Stoute, founder/CEO of UnitedMasters, in a statement. “TikTok recognizes the power of music and creativity, which is why we are excited to formalize this partnership.”
“TikTok has proven that it’s a launchpad for artists, turning viral moments into chart-topping hits,” Stoute added. “With this partnership, I look forward to seeing our artists thrive on TikTok and extend their reach and influence across the music industry. We’re building a future where they can own their success and grow their careers on their own terms.”
“We want to make the world’s best music available to our global community of over a billion music fans,” added Ole Obermann, head of music business development at TikTok. “That’s why we are so excited to be entering into a direct deal with a prominent independent label like UnitedMasters, with its deep, diverse roster of independent artists. Together, we’re ready to amplify these voices and bring their music to a global stage, unlocking new opportunities for discovery.”
Merlin’s license with TikTok is set to expire on Oct. 31. Labels or distributors that have not reached an individual agreement with TikTok by then will become unlicensed and removed from the platform.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Are you a music lover on the hunt for a tech upgrade? We’ve got good news for you. Artists like Selena […]
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: picture alliance / Getty / Amazon
Word on the e-streets is that Amazon is looking to open a low-cost storefront to rival Temu. We just hope that if this is true, the products will be of good quality.
Website The Information (yes, that is the actual name) has seen internal information sent to Amazon merchants detailing the price caps of some of the products for the new low-cost storefront.
According to the website, prices are $8 for jewelry, $9 for bedding, $13 for guitars, and $20 for sofas. Everything under this new “Low-Cost Store” ships from its fulfillment center in Guangdong, China.
While you will be getting items for the low-low, don’t expect them to come at the breakneck delivery speeds you have grown accustomed to from Amazon. The Information reports that the new storefront will have slower shipping timelines of nine to 11 days, but sellers will be charged lower fulfillment fees.
Per Engadget:
A seller would be charged between $1.77 and $2.05 to ship a 4-8 ounce item through the Low-Cost Store, compared with a $2.67 to $4.16 charge for an item of that weight shipped under Fulfillment by Amazon from a domestic warehouse, according to The Information.
Amazon has not set price limits on its eponymous online storefront, so this new platform will be a markedly different strategy from its usual approach. It’s more in line with the pricing policy followed by Temu, which launched in 2022.
In its two years of existence, Temu has earned a reputation for selling items of poor quality; Amazon can swoop in and take control of another market if it delivers the same goods but with better quality.
We shall see what happens.
Thousands of musicians, composers, actors and authors from across the creative industries, including ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, all five members of Radiohead and The Cure’s Robert Smith, have signed a statement opposing artificial intelligence companies and developers using their work without a license for training generative AI systems.
Signatories also include all three major record labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — as well as a wide range of music trade organizations representing record labels, publishers and creators from the U.S., Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Mexico, the U.K., Ireland, Sweden and Brazil.
Trending on Billboard
“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,” reads the single-sentence statement posted at aitrainingstatement.org.
Within several hours of going live on Tuesday (Oct. 22), the statement had been signed by more 11,500 people from across the creative arts, including actors Kevin Bacon, Sean Astin and Rosario Dawson; authors James Patterson, Ian Rankin, Ann Patchett and Kate Mosse; and music artists Billy Bragg, Max Richter and Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora.
The global campaign was conceived and organized by Ed Newton-Rex, a British composer now based in the U.S., who has formerly held several senior executive roles at AI technology and music companies.
In 2010, Newton-Rex founded Jukedeck, a U.K.-based AI music generation company that provided music for video, TV, radio, podcasts and games. It was acquired by TikTok parent company ByteDance in 2019.
Following the acquisition, Newton-Rex, who is also a choral composer, went on to run ByteDance’s European AI Lab before becoming head of audio at tech firm Stability AI. He quit that role last year in protest of the company’s belief that it is acceptable to use copyrighted work without a license on “fair use” grounds without permission from rights holders.
Newton-Rex tells Billboard that several trade groups are supporting his campaign and helped gather signatories but have not provided funding for the initiative.
The statement comes amid increasing concern from creators and rights holders over how their works are being exploited by AI developers for generative training purposes — and how to rein those tech companies in.
Earlier this year, the three major record companies filed lawsuits against AI music firms Suno and Udio alleging the widespread infringement of copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.”
In the U.K., the government is soon to launch a consultation on how to regulate AI technology and is understood to be exploring a scheme that would allow AI companies to legally scrape copyright-protected content from artists and rights holders unless they “opt out.”
Creator groups say that any “opt out” solution would be highly damaging to the music business and would prefer an “opt in” scheme that grants rights holders the ability to approve the use of their works by AI companies.
Tech giants Google and Microsoft are meanwhile calling for the British government to soften the country’s copyright laws for AI firms and introduce an exception for text and data mining of copyrighted works, including music, for commercial purposes. Such a premise was raised by the previous Conservative government in 2022 but was abandoned a year later following strong criticism from musicians and creators.
“Copyright serves to safeguard the value of human creativity, while also driving value in the wider music and creative industries,” said Sophie Jones, chief strategy officer at U.K. labels trade body BPI, one of the organizations supporting Newton-Rex, in a statement. “If the U.K. is to remain a global creative powerhouse in an increasingly competitive world,” she continued, “the government must ensure that it is respected and enforced.”
Those views were echoed by the Association of Independent Music (AIM), which has also signed the statement.
“To achieve the benefits of AI for creativity, we urge policymakers not to lose sight of the need for strong copyright protections,” said AIM interim CEO Gee Davy in a statement on Tuesday (Oct. 22). She added that it was “vital” policymakers protect artists and rights holders “to ensure a healthy future for those who create, invest in and release music across genres and all communities, regions and nations of the U.K.”
Tuesday’s statement is just the latest salvo in the battle between generative AI companies and rights holders. In May, Sony Music released a statement warning more than 700 AI companies not to scrape the company’s copyrighted data, while Warner Music released a similar statement in July. That same month in the U.S. Senate, a bill dubbed the No FAKES Act, which aims to protect creators from AI deepfakes, was introduced by a bipartisan group of senators.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: ODD ANDERSEN / Getty / Elon Musk
Elon Musk is currently out here stumping for Trump and giving money to those who sign up for his Super PAC. Due to a new lawsuit, he may have to dig even deeper into his pockets.
Spotted on The Verge, one of the production companies behind the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049, feels Elon Musk, who is honestly just the Donald Trump of tech, ripped off the movie for his robotaxi event.
On Monday, October 21, LA-based production company Alcon Entertainment slapped Phony Stark, his company Tesla, and Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging the use of an AI image generator to create promotional art for the We, Robot event that resembles stills from Blade Runner 2049.
According to Alcon, who also owns the copyright to Blade Runner 2049, WBD and Tesla decided to slide them a request to use imagery from the film just hours ahead of the We, Robot event on October 10 that conveniently took place on the Warner Bros. lot in California.
The website notes that because this event was live-streamed internationally, Alcon directly had to provide clearance for the images, even though Warner Bros. owns some licensing rights to Blade Runner 2049.
Per The Verge:
“Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account,” Alcon’s suit explains. “Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
Despite Alcon’s refusal, however, Tesla allegedly decided to feed shots from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to create “a lightly stylized fake screen still screen” which was displayed prominently during the We, Robot presentation.
The Verge also reports that Musk mentioned Blade Runner while describing sci-fi interpretations of the future. The live stream cut to a photo of a man wearing a trench coat standing in front of a dusty apocalyptic cityscape, basically the entire look of Blade Runner 2049.
This is not the first time Elon Musk and his company have been accused of copying someone else’s style. During the same event, the director of I Robot, Alex Proyas, accused Musk of swagger-jacking his designs, a claim many people on X, formerly Twitter, quickly made.
So, these latest accusations don’t shock us at all.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: NYVGCC / New York Game Awards
The NYVGCC (New York Video Game Critic’s Circle) has announced the return of its annual awards show, the New York Game Awards.
Not to be confused with Geoff Keighly’s yearly spectacle, The Game Awards, or the New York Game Awards, which are celebrating their 14th year. The Game Awards celebrate the year’s best in gaming and benefit a worthy cause.
Variety exclusively reports that when the New York Game Awards will be back at the SVA Theater in Manhattan with Circle President Harold Goldberg and former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé set as co-hosts.
For those looking to attend, tickets will be sold on Eventbrite and cost $80. For $100, you get limited access to the awards afterparty, where you can rub shoulders with the winners, hosts, and the yearly Legend Award winner while enjoying complimentary drinks.
Outside of the announcement of this year’s hosts, the identity of this year’s Legend Award recipient has not been revealed. Previous prestigious award winners include Xbox Gaming Chief Phil Spencer and Naughty Dog Studios’ president, Neil Druckmann.
Celebrating Video Games For A Purpose
As mentioned above, the New York Game Awards is the leading fundraiser for the NYVGCC’s Playing with Purpose writing program. The program helps bring video game journalism and game narrative workshops to shelters and schools across the city, also working with students and interns at the Laboratory School, TAPco, Dreamyard Prep, BronxWorks Shelter, Mott Hall 3 Middle School, and Andries Hudde Middle School.
“We can’t believe another year in gaming has passed, but we’re ready to welcome in the 14th annual New York Game Awards,” NYVGCC president and founder Harold Goldberg said, per Variety. “Each year is a special undertaking where we not only highlight the best of gaming, but we honor the creators, developers, and media who help make this an industry we all love. We have a very special lineup you won’t want to miss, so stay tuned for more updates by following us at @nyvgcc on X.”
HHW Gaming has been able to attend the last New York Game Award ceremonies; we are looking forward to being there again and celebrating another year of video games.
Grammy-winning producer Timbaland has taken on a new role as a strategic advisor to Suno, an AI music company that can generate full songs at the click of a button.
News of the deal comes four months after the three major music companies collectively sued Suno (and competitor Udio) for alleged infringement of their copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.”
According to a press release from Suno, Timbaland has been a “top user” of the platform for months, and this announcement formalizes his involvement with Suno. The partnership will be kicked off with Timbaland previewing his latest single “Love Again” exclusively on Suno’s platform.
Then, Suno users will be able to participate in a remix contest, which will include feedback and judging from Timbaland himself and over $100,000 in prizes for winning remixes. Timbaland will also release the top two remixes of “Love Again” on streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music and more.
Trending on Billboard
Additionally, as part of being a strategic advisor to Suno, Timbaland will assume an “active” role in the “day-to-day product development and strategic creative direction” of new generative AI tools, says the company in a press release.
Suno is one of the most advanced generative AI music companies on the market today. Using simple text prompts, users can generate voice, lyrics and instrumentals in seconds. On May 21, Suno announced that it had raised $125 million in funding across multiple funding rounds, including investments from including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective. Suno also said it had been working closely with a team of advisors, including 3LAU, Aaron Levie, Alexandr Wang, Amjad Masad, Andrej Karpathy, Aravind Srinivas, Brendan Iribe, Flosstradamus, Fred Ehrsam, Guillermo Rauch and Shane Mac.
Though many have marveled at its uncanny music-making capabilities, the music business establishment also feared that Suno might have been trained on copyrighted material without consent. (At the time, Suno declined to state what materials were in its training data, and whether or not it included copyrighted music).
Then, Billboard broke the news on June 20 that the major labels were weighing the idea of a lawsuit against Suno and Udio, alleging widespread copyright infringement of their sound recordings for the purposes of AI training. After the lawsuit was officially filed four days later, Suno and Udio then hired top law firm Latham & Watkins, and filed lengthy responses to fire back at the labels. Suno noted it was “no secret” that the company had ingested “essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet” and that it was “fair use” to use these files.
“When I heard what Suno was doing, I was immediately curious,” says Timbaland of the partnership. “After witnessing the potential, I knew I had to be a part of it. By combining forces, we have a unique opportunity to make A.I. work for the artist community and not the other way around. We’re seizing that opportunity, and we’re going to open up the floodgates for generations of artists to flourish on this new frontier. I’m excited and grateful to Suno for this opportunity.”
“It’s an honor to work with a legend like Timbaland,” says Mikey Shulman, CEO of Suno. “At Suno, we’re really excited about exploring new ways for fans to engage with their favorite artists. With Timbaland’s guidance, we’re helping musicians create music at the speed of their ideas—whether they’re just starting out or already selling out stadiums. We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead!”
The newest upsurge in artificial intelligence technology is streamlining the tedious tasks that run beneath the glamor of the industry, from simplifying marketing strategies to easing direct fan engagement to handling financial intricacies. And as this ecosystem matures, companies are discovering unprecedented methods to not only navigate but thrive within these new paradigms.
In our previous guest column, we explored how the wave of music tech startups is empowering musicians, artists and the creative process. Now, we shift our focus to the technologies revolutionizing the business side of the industry, including artist services, ticketing, fan engagement and more.
Music marketing has continued to evolve and become increasingly data-driven. A natural next step after creation and distribution, marketing involves creating assets for a campaign to effectively engage with the right audience. Traditionally, this has been a resource-intensive task, but now, AI-driven startups are providing efficiencies by automating much of this process.
Trending on Billboard
Startups like Symphony and un:hurd are now providing automated campaign management services, handling everything from social media ads to DSP and playlist pitching from a single automated hub. Some of these platforms even incorporate financial management tools into their offerings.
“Having financial management tools integrated into one platform allows for better revenue management and planning,” says Rameen Satar, founder/CEO of the financial management platform BANDS. “Overall, a unified platform simplifies the complexities of managing a music career, empowering musicians to focus more on their creative work and succeed in the industry.”
One hot topic as of late has been superfan monetization, with multiple startups creating platforms for artists to engage with and monetize their fan bases directly. From fan-designed merchandise on Softside to artist-to-fan streaming platform Vault.fm, which recently partnered with James Blake, these platforms provide personalized fan experiences including exclusive content, NFTs, merchandise, early access to tickets and bespoke offerings.
Drew Thurlow and Rufy Anam Ghazi
Courtesy Photo
“The future of fan engagement will be community-driven. No two fan communities are alike, so engagement will be bespoke to each artist,” says Andy Apple, co-founder/CEO of superfan platform Mellomanic. “Artists will each have their own unique culture, but share one commonality: Every community will align, organize and innovate to support the goals of the artist.”
Managing metadata and accounting royalties through the global web of streaming services is another area seeing innovation. With nearly 220 million tracks now registered at DSPs, according to content ID company Audible Magic, startups are stepping in to offer solutions across the music distribution and monetization chain. New tools are being developed to organize and search catalogs, manage track credits and splits, handle incomes, find unclaimed royalties, and clean up metadata errors.
”While we have well-publicized challenges still around artist remuneration, there are innovation opportunities across the value chain, driving growth through improved operations and new models,” says Gareth Deakin of Sonorous Global Consulting, a London-based consultancy that works with labels and music creators to best use emerging technologies.
Another issue that some AI companies have stepped in help solve is preventing fraud — a significant concern stemming from the ease of music distribution and the sheer volume of new music being released every day. Startups are helping labels and digital service providers address this problem with anti-piracy, content detection and audio fingerprinting technology. Beatdapp, for instance, which developed groundbreaking AI technology to detect fake streams, has partnered with Universal Music Group, SoundExchange and Napster. Elsewhere, MatchTune has patented an algorithm that detects AI-generated and manipulated audio, and a few others are developing tech to ensure the ethical use of copyrighted material by connecting rights holders and AI developers for fair compensation. Music recognition technology (MRT), which also utilizes audio fingerprinting technology, is becoming a prominent way to identify, track and monetize music plays across various platforms, including on-ground venues and other commercial spaces.
In the live music industry, there has been minimal innovation in ticketing, especially at the club level. That’s starting to turn around, however, as new technologies are emerging to automate the tracking of ticket sales and counts, thereby helping agents and promoters reduce manual workloads.
RealCount is one such startup that helps artists, agencies and promoters make sense of ticketing data. “We see RealCount as a second brain for promoters, agents and venues, automating the tracking of ticket counts and sales data from any point of sale,” says Diane Gremore, the company’s founder/CEO. Other exciting developments are taking place in how live events are experienced virtually, with platforms like Condense delivering immersive 3D content in real time.
Drew Thurlow is the founder of Opening Ceremony Media where he advises music and music tech companies. Previously he was senior vp of A&R at Sony Music, and director of artists partnerships & industry relations at Pandora. His first book, about music & AI, will be released by Routledge in early 2026.
Rufy Anam Ghazi is a seasoned music business professional with over eight years of experience in product development, data analysis, research, business strategy, and partnerships. Known for her data-driven decision-making and innovative approach, she has successfully led product development, market analysis, and strategic growth initiatives, fostering strong industry relationships.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Sony has become beloved by music lovers not only for providing high-quality speakers for streaming your party playlists, but its line […]
In July, popular influencer/podcast host Tinx took to TikTok to ask her followers a question: “Are labels and artists asking random people to make content about music and not say[ing] it’s an ad?” The answer in the over 700 replies to the video was a resounding and simple “yes.”
“Sound campaigns” have been an integral part of music marketing since TikTok took off in 2019, but they differ from other paid promotion campaigns on social media. Captioning a video with #ad, or another similar disclosure, is required by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) when companies “pay you or give you free or discounted products or services” in exchange for featuring their product in a video, but that has never been the standard for the paid promotion of a song. “Any essence of perceived authenticity can be stripped away when a creator tags a video as paid,” says one digital marketing agency CEO.
As a result, one major label marketer believes “75% of popular songs on TikTok started with a creator marketing campaign,” but says that there’s no way to actually track how many of the songs that go viral on TikTok do so organically or are boosted by thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars’ worth of paid promo.
Trending on Billboard
When asked for clarification about whether or not promoting songs in the background of videos requires disclosure, a representative for the FTC said, “While we can’t comment on any particular example, that practice seems somewhat analogous to a product placement… When there are songs playing in the backgrounds of videos, there are no objective claims made about the songs. The video creator may be communicating implicitly that they like the song, but viewers can judge the song themselves when they listen to it playing in the video. For these reasons, it may not be necessary for a video to disclose that the content creator was compensated for using a particular song in the background in the video. We would evaluate each case individually however.”
While it is not, in most cases, an FTC violation to run undisclosed creator campaigns to promote singles on TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, it remains a little-understood area of music marketing that many music fans are not aware is happening. “The beauty of Tiktok, for me, has disappeared because I’m super cynical and believe everything I see there, disclosed or not, is paid to be promoted,” says the digital marketing agency CEO. (Most of the sources in this story requested anonymity in order to speak freely about how these campaigns work.)
Often, digital marketing gurus will reminisce about the days of the Hype House bros and the D’Amelio’s TikTok reign, around the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which were considered the good ol’ days for creator marketing. At the time, it was expected for successful TikTok virality to translate into boosts in streams practically every time. “Back then, it made sense to pay over $10,000 a video for those famous kids to post your song. There was a high probability of [return on investment] ROI in 2020,” says a second digital marketing agency CEO. One creator manager says they remember a top creator at the time boasting about getting “$50,000 to just play the sound” in the background of a TikTok.
Typically, these creators would be instructed by an artist manager, a label, or a third-party digital marketing company (most times the latter) to perform a certain trend along with the song, like a dance or a certain filter, in exchange for money.
But these days, experts like George Karalexis, CEO of YouTube marketing and rights management company Ten2 Media, say it’s “more expensive and harder than ever to start a trend” online. As Billboard reported in 2022, TikTok tracks in the U.S. were streamed far less that year than they were in 2021, according to the most recent available data from Luminate.
Now, this unpredictability has led to top creators rarely fetching rates of over $10,000 for the use of a song in a video. Instead, digital marketers are spreading their budgets over many videos from smaller creators to make the illusion of a less-detectable groundswell of support. The second digital marketing agency CEO says today’s payment ranges from $25 for a micro creator (at or below about 10,000 followers) to $10,000 for a TikTok star to post the song.
Recently, a cottage industry of startups has popped up in the creator campaign space, automating the connection between smaller creators and artists looking to pay them to promote their songs. One of the leading companies, Sound.Me, for example, recently ran a creator campaign for “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” through their service. TikTok is also offering up a similar service with its “Work With Artists” feature inside the app, which allows qualifying creators (those with over 50,000 followers and living within a certain territory) to get paid to use songs, like Halsey’s cover of “Lucky,” in their videos.
Even when an artist is willing to spend a significant budget on one particular creator, that doesn’t mean the creator will always accept. Sound promos are known to be less lucrative for creators than other brand deals, like fashion or skincare, and thus it’s common for top creators to “shoot [the artist’s team] an outrageous number, knowing a sound campaign is not necessarily worth their time otherwise,” says the creator manager.
It is also far less common to ask for a specific type of video from a creator today. Instead, the second digital marketing CEO says “it’s not really about pushing specific creative. It’s just about finding the right creators for the artist’s target audience and kind of just letting the influencers run with creative freedom.”
All of this makes discerning the paid promotion of a song from organic enthusiasm more challenging than ever. Even more complicated, the creator manager says that it’s “best practice” for creators “who want to work with a specific brand to show for free that they are using the brand’s products anyway to attract their attention. Same goes for songs.”
The sign of true success for these campaigns is when social media use of the song grows far beyond the initial budget, encouraging unpaid creators to jump in and use the track, too, multiple digital marketing sources say. “The value is in the people [using the song] that aren’t being paid,” says Jeremy Gruber, head of artist marketing and digital strategy at management company Friends at Work. “Success is when we have 13 types of videos going on at once to the song,” adds one indie label marketer. “We can’t even tell what’s happening.”
Typically, these sound campaigns are conducted in phases, and while they are common, they are not expected for every single release, three label marketing sources say. $5,000 is the low-end for what two digital marketing agencies believe would be a fruitful campaign, but the spending can grow to $80,000 (or even into the six figures for rare cases) if it is a big-name artist and the song is reacting positively. Typically after the first round of the campaign, the team will watch and see if the song grows. If it does, then a next wave of spending will be opened up and seeded out to creators to stoke the flame.
Gruber believes an ethical gray area arises when artists’ teams offer money to music curation influencers to explicitly recommend a song without disclosing the transaction to viewers. Unlike a “product placement”-like promotion which simply streams in the background, these music curators use TikTok to talk to the camera, telling consumers to take action and check out new songs in exchange for undisclosed money, concert tickets or other perks. When asked about this type of promotion specifically, the FTC declined to comment on whether or not disclosure is needed.
It’s also common for record labels to turn to social media-based blogs, typically in the rap genre, like WorldStarHipHop, Rap, Our Generation Music and more which offer pay-to-play promotion on TikTok and other social platforms to create the appearance of organic online chatter. In one message exchange, reviewed by Billboard, a representative from Rap told a music company that “solo” posts go for $1,000, but they offer discounted rates for ordering in “bulk.” Typically, these payments are not disclosed to consumers.
While it might come as a surprise to some music lovers to learn how often these paid campaigns are used, the general consensus among the eight sources spoken to for this story is that it isn’t harming anyone to do it —at least not in the types of campaigns that resemble product placements. “Music, to me, is this beautiful art form and it is completely different from other ‘products’ in other industries [that run creator campaigns],” says the first digital marketing agency CEO. “We do feel that ethically we’re promoting content that is a net positive to society.”
It may not be as effective as it was a few years ago, but creator campaigns are largely believed to still be essential to market songs today, whether it’s on TikTok or on Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts (which is increasingly common). Says the second digital marketing agency founder: “It’s still the best thing we have.”
This story was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.