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Searching for the perfect pair of jeans can be a challenge, but once you find them, you’ll never want to take them off. When shopping for jeans, I typically seek a form-fitting, high-rise style that offers comfort.
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This TikTok-approved Abercrombie & Fitch High Rise Ankle Straight Jeans has everything you’re looking for from fit to color — you can’t go wrong. They’re on sale now for just $39.99, saving you up to 56%.
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Abercrombie & Fitch Curve Love Ultra High Rise Ankle Straight Jean
$39.99
$90
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With its “all-day comfort stretch fabric,” these jeans provide both style and comfort. They’re made of 99% cotton and 1% Elastane. The stretchy material make them easy to put on and adjust to your body shape.
These jeans also accentuate your natural curves and provide a sophisticated aesthetic. With a stretchy material, comfort is guaranteed. According to one user, you can move around without the jeans feeling tight on your body. So if you are looking for snug and form-fitting jeans, this is the way to go.
Although these jeans are perfect for all shapes and sizes, the brand only currently has waist sizes 24, 25 and 26; check for restocks. For length, regular and long styles are available.
When it’s time to wash, the brand suggests machine washing in cold water. They also advise to turn the jeans inside out to avoid color transfer.
To ensure you get the right fit, make sure to check out the brand’s size guide to get the pair that’s best for you.
For more product recommendations, check out our roundup of celebrity-approved jeans, baggy jean alternatives and other great fashion deals you don’t want to miss out on.
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The National Music Publishers’ Association’s (NMPA) model TikTok license, which is used by a number of the independent music publishers, will expire at the end of April, and there are no ongoing negotiations between the NMPA and TikTok to renew it.
That means that starting May 1, more songs will be removed from TikTok, joining the millions that have already been removed from the Universal Music Group’s catalog earlier this year. At the end of January, licensing negotiations between UMG and TikTok collapsed, resulting in UMG’s decision to pull its music off the platform. In an open letter sent to artists and songwriters, the company lamented that TikTok failed to pay the “fair value” for music. It also noted other concerns with the platform, including AI concerns and artist safety. TikTok replied within hours, calling UMG’s letter a “false narrative” and that it was “sad and disappointing that [UMG] has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
It is unclear how widespread the impact of the NMPA’s lapsed license will be. A TikTok spokesperson claims that only a small percentage of its overall music library used the model license and that they are not sure TikTok users will even notice the removals. The spokesperson adds that TikTok is in talks with a number of the publishers who used the NMPA license about getting an individual license, including a few of the larger players that use the NMPA model license. TikTok declined to provide further details.
The NMPA is also tight-lipped about the size of this impact, given the decision of whether or not to individually renew TikTok licenses for May 1 is in the hands of its members, not the NMPA. While the NMPA cannot disclose which independent music publishers use its model license for TikTok, it appears that it is a popular option, used by a large number of firms, ranging from tiny boutiques to sizable independents. The major publishers and some large indies negotiate directly with TikTok already, but the NMPA’s TikTok model license exists as a service largely to help the smaller publishers who would have less negotiating power or resources to get the license on their own.
The NMPA also has model licenses with the other social media networks available to its members, including YouTube, Meta and others, and the organization says it will continue to offer these other model licenses to members. X, notably, is absent from this list because it does not pay for music that appears on its platform. The NMPA has been asking X to license and pay for music for years to no avail, leading the trade organization to launch a $250 million lawsuit against X in June 2023.
The NMPA’s decision to pull out of TikTok should come as little surprise. NMPA president and CEO David Israelite has been supportive of UMG, and its publishing company and NMPA member UMPG, and its choice to leave TikTok since the beginning. Right after UMG announced its exit, Israelite offered a statement, saying “it is extremely unfortunate that TikTok does not seem to value the music creators that fuel its business.”
On Feb. 2, Israelite gave a speech at the Association of Independent Music Publishers Grammy week event, announcing that the NMPA’s license was set to expire at the end of April. “I’m only going to say two things about TikTok: the first is I think music is tremendously important to the business model of TikTok, and, secondly, I am just stating the fact that the NMPA model license, which many of you are using, with TikTok expires in April,” he said at the time.
On March 5, the organization sent a letter to its members, explaining that the NMPA did not foresee renewing its license with TikTok and told members using their model license to negotiate directly with TikTok if they wanted to continue to be on the platform. Since then, the organization has not returned to the negotiating table with TikTok.
In a statement, TikTok said, “We have direct deals in place with thousands of music publishers — including NMPA members — and we will continue to engage with the entire publishing industry to help make their songs available on TikTok.”
Beyoncé has a new bestie. It all started when a TikTok user named Bea Fabregas shared an adorable video of her two-year-old toddler named Tyler asking where Bey is during a pizza date. When Fabregas explained that she doesn’t know the 32-time Grammy winner personally, Tyler insisted that Beyoncé is his “friend.” The “Texas Hold […]
President Joe Biden signed into law a national security bill on Wednesday that would force TikTok to be sold by its owner, ByteDance, or face a possible ban in the United States. Minutes later, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew responded with a video posted to the platform, declaring that “rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
“Make no mistake, this is a ban, a ban on TikTok and a ban on you and your voice,” Chew says in the video. “Politicians may say otherwise. But don’t get confused.”
The legislation signed by Biden gives ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. It would also keep ByteDance from controlling TikTok’s algorithm, which is credited with helping the app rocket in popularity.
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In his video, Chew suggests that freedom of speech will be the company’s argument against the ban, saying that the bill becoming law is “a disappointing moment, but it does not need to be a defining one.
“It’s actually ironic because the freedom of expression on TikTok reflects the same American values that make the United States a beacon of freedom,” he continues. “TikTok gives everyday Americans a powerful way to be seen and heard.”
To that end, Chew also seeks to reassure users that the app is not going anywhere anytime soon and to rally its users to weigh in publicly on how important TikTok is to them:
“You will still be able to enjoy TikTok like you always have, in fact, if you have a story about how TikTok impacts your life, we would love for you to share it to showcase exactly what we’re fighting for,” he says.
With the legislation now law, it is only a matter of time before TikTok sues to stop it, and the countdown clock has officially started. As of writing, barring a court-issued delay, ByteDance will have until Jan. 24, 2025, to find a buyer, or risk having the app wiped away from U.S. users.
“We are confident, and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts,” Chew says in the video. “The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
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Source: Anadolu / Getty / TikTok
Congress hasn’t agreed on much lately, but one they seem to be locked in on is TikTok’s threat to national security, so it’s no surprise the bill that could potentially lead to its banning passed.
Congress passed the bill on Tuesday, April 23. It calls for a national ban on TikTok if its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, can’t find a buyer.
As promised, President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Wednesday, April 24. This gives the company nine months with a three-month grace period to secure a deal for the platform.
The U.S. government has been wary of the app since the Trump administration because of potential national security concerns related to its Chinese ties.
Security experts and lawmakers have been raising the red flag about the popular app kids use to partake in viral dance choreography and share hilarious videos because they feel the Chinese government can use ByteDance to access the 170 million U.S. users’ private information or spread propaganda.
It Will Be An Uphill Battle To “Ban” TikTok
While many are reacting to the news with the inclination that the ban will go into effect immediately, the new law could take months, possibly years, to get TikTok up outta here.
Per The New York Times:
The law would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States if ByteDance sold it within 270 days, or about nine months, a time frame that the president could extend to a year.
The measure is likely to face legal challenges, as well as possible resistance from Beijing, which could block the sale or export of the technology. It’s also unclear who has the resources to buy TikTok, since it will carry a hefty price tag.
The issue could take months or even years to settle, during which the app would probably continue to function for U.S. consumers.
TikTok Vows To Fight The Ban
Of course, TikTok vows to fight. Chief executive Shou Chew said in a video, “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere. We are confident, and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts.”
We shall see.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday night that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that’s expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short-form video app for income.
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The TikTok legislation was included as part of a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and was passed 79-18. It now goes to President Joe Biden, who said in a statement immediately after passage that he will sign it Wednesday.
A decision made by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped expedite its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version had given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to divest its stakes in the platform. But it drew skepticism from some key lawmakers concerned it was too short of a window for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.
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The revised legislation extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, and a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. The bill would also bar the company from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a trendsetting phenomenon.
TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday night.
The passage of the legislation is a culmination of long-held bipartisan fears in Washington over Chinese threats and the ownership of TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans. For years, lawmakers and administration officials have expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data, or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content on TikTok.
“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell said. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.”
Opponents of the bill say the Chinese government could easily get information on Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers that traffic in personal information. The foreign aid package includes a provision that makes it illegal for data brokers to sell or rent “personally identifiable sensitive data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or entities in those countries. But it has encountered some pushback, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the language is written too broadly and could sweep in journalists and others who publish personal information.
Many opponents of the TikTok measure argue the best way to protect U.S. consumers is through implementing a comprehensive federal data privacy law that targets all companies regardless of their origin. They also note the U.S. has not provided public evidence that shows TikTok sharing U.S. user information with Chinese authorities, or that Chinese officials have ever tinkered with its algorithm.
“Banning TikTok would be an extraordinary step that requires extraordinary justification,” said Becca Branum, a deputy director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which advocates for digital rights. “Extending the divestiture deadline neither justifies the urgency of the threat to the public nor addresses the legislation’s fundamental constitutional flaws.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who voted for the legislation, said he has concerns about TikTok, but he’s also worried the bill could have negative effects on free speech, doesn’t do enough to protect consumer privacy and could potentially be abused by a future administration to violate First Amendment rights.
“I plan to watchdog how this legislation is implemented,” Wyden said in a statement.
China has previously said it would oppose a forced sale of TikTok, and has signaled its opposition this time around. TikTok, which has long denied it’s a security threat, is also preparing a lawsuit to block the legislation.
“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, wrote in a memo sent to employees on Saturday and obtained by The Associated Press.
“This is the beginning, not the end of this long process,” Beckerman wrote.
The company has seen some success with court challenges in the past, but it has never sought to prevent federal legislation from going into effect.
In November, a federal judge blocked a Montana law that would ban TikTok use across the state after the company and five content creators who use the platform sued. Three years before that, federal courts blocked an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump to ban TikTok after the company sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights.
The Trump administration then brokered a deal that had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok. But the sale never went through.
Trump, who is running for president again this year, now says he opposes the potential ban.
Since then, TikTok has been in negotiations about its future with the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a little-known government agency tasked with investigating corporate deals for national security concerns.
On Sunday, Erich Andersen, a top attorney for ByteDance who led talks with the U.S. government for years, told his team that he was stepping down from his role.
“As I started to reflect some months ago on the stresses of the last few years and the new generation of challenges that lie ahead, I decided that the time was right to pass the baton to a new leader,” Andersen wrote in an internal memo that was obtained by the AP. He said the decision to step down was entirely his and was decided months ago in a discussion with the company’s senior leaders.
Meanwhile, TikTok content creators who rely on the app have been trying to make their voices heard. Earlier Tuesday, some creators congregated in front the Capitol building to speak out against the bill and carry signs that read “I’m 1 of the 170 million Americans on TikTok,” among other things.
Tiffany Cianci, a content creator who has more than 140,000 followers on the platform and had encouraged people to show up, said she spent Monday night picking up creators from airports in the D.C. area. Some came from as far as Nevada and California. Others drove overnight from South Carolina or took a bus from upstate New York.
Cianci says she believes TikTok is the safest platform for users right now because of Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant Oracle.
“If our data is not safe on TikTok,” she said. “I would ask why the president is on TikTok.”
Jake Shane, who has nearly 3 million followers on TikTok thanks to his viral comedy videos under the handle @octopusslover8, is reviewing albums for Billboard with exclusive new essays and videos. Find his latest Billboard album review below, for Taylor Swift’s just-released The Tortured Poets Department album.
Taylor Swift, known for her vulnerability, has never been so vulnerable.
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First thing Friday (April 19), Swift welcomed us into The Tortured Poets Department, her earth-shattering 11th studio album. Except, upon arrival, listeners discovered it was more a graveyard than a classroom. The air is cold and filled with tension from ghosts of relationships past — each step inviting the listener closer and closer into stories frozen in time. The end result is an album that feels like pages ripped from Swift’s diary loosely scattered across a frosty gravesite — each tomb sharing its own story of grief, loss and, in some instances, love.
Tortured Poets is undoubtably Swift’s most personal album to date — which, for Swift is a hard feat to beat. Through classic Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner production, Swift’s pen floats on lyrics sharp to the touch. This is especially true on the Dessner-produced track 5, “So Long, London.” In it, Swift says goodbye to a relationship she gave everything for, but received no ROI. “My spine split from carrying us up the hill,” Swift proclaims; this is Swift at her very best, painting a photo of heartbreak so vivid that it almost feels like our bones are breaking too. Close listeners will notice the beginning of the track sounds similar to Swift’s love song “Call It What You Want” off her sixth studio album Reputation. Perhaps the most cutting lyrics, though, on “So Long, London” come in the second verse, when Swift admits her regret for holding on to the “sinking ship” that the relationship was: “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.”
One of Swift’s defining talents is how she builds a cohesive narrative throughout her albums, and here, that ability has never been more on display. On Tortured Poets, Swift walks the listener through a barren graveyard filled with withered bones and torn memories, only to finally reach sunlight — on the final two tracks of the album (not including the extra 15 songs that dropped at 2 a.m. ET), Swift has once again found love. On “The Alchemy,” Swift sings of a love so undeniable, she is returning to her old, pre-tortured ways: “I haven’t come around in so long. But I’m making a comeback to where I belong.”
As always, Swift’s lyricism shines bright (arguably brighter than ever before). This is notable on the absolutely devastating “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” where Swift looks in the rearview of a past relationship with more questions than answers. “You hung me on your wall. Stabbed me with your push pins. In public, showed me off. Then sank in stoned oblivion.” Swift’s pen is pointed, but, then again, when is it not? She doesn’t want to talk to said “man,” but she wants a message delivered: “You didn’t measure up in any measure of a man.”
On “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” Swift is at her most bare, detailing the heartbreak-turned -depression she faced while performing the biggest tour of her career (and perhaps of all time). “She’s having the time of her life there in her glittering prime. The lights refract sequin stars off her silhouette every night. I can show you lies,” Swift croons over a synth beat. Swift calls back to folklore’s “mirrorball” by proving once again that she can be anything we want her to be, even if it’s not true. It is one of the first times Swift has broken the third wall since the start of the record-breaking tour, and it is almost reassuring to listeners and fans alike. Taylor is human, too, even when her stardom questions the laws of physics.
One of the greatest tales Swift tells is that of heartbreak to healing; she did it on Reputation, and on Tortured Poets she has done it once more — this time, though, with more maturity and the clarity only age can bring. At the end of the album, Swift has once again found love and forgiven heartbreak. It might not be her true love, but she’s happy — oh, and she’s Taylor Swift. Who can argue with that?
You can find Shane’s review of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter here.
TikTok announced “the ultimate Taylor Swift in-app experience” on Friday (April 19), a way to “connect Swifties with exclusive and first-of-its-kind features.”
TikTok is certainly not the only platform to join with Swift in her promoting her new release, The Tortured Poets Department. Many iHeartRadio stations played the whole album the moment it came out (plus a song from it at the top of every hour), for example, while Spotify launched a three-day “library-themed art installation” to celebrate the album in Los Angeles.
What’s different about TikTok’s announcement: The platform is embroiled in an ongoing licensing dispute with Universal Music Group, Swift’s distribution partner. Because the two sides have been unable to reach an agreement, official recordings from UMG’s artists have (mostly) been removed from TikTok. Swift’s music was absent for a time, but a large chunk of it reappeared on the platform last week.
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Now, not only is the superstar able to circumvent UMG’s TikTok embargo, she is also getting additional promotional help from the platform. “With multiple first-of-its-kind features, fans can dive into the album with playlists to create with, as well as challenges to unlock exclusive artwork for their profiles, and the opportunity to be featured in a Fan Spotlight carousel,” TikTok’s announcement notes.
This is all but guaranteed to make some UMG artists — those who have developed devoted TikTok followings, or had success marketing music on the platform in the past — jealous. “TikTok is mostly used as a new-music discovery tool — discover a clip on TikTok, listen to it on a DSP,” a music lawyer told Billboard last week. “So those who are trying to get their music discovered are the most concerned” about being unable to promote new songs on the app.
Due to that concern, some artists with viral hits are trying to come up with workarounds to allow their songs to remain on TikTok.
Swift’s TikTok partnership, despite the UMG ban, was a display of her power in the music business, as an artist who moves as many units in a year as some entire label divisions. There had been significant speculation about what her return to the service meant — whether it implied a carve out in her contract allowing her to do a direct deal with the social platform, or whether her original contract had always contained such a provision. With today’s news, some of the parameters of that agreement have come more into focus, in terms of the promotion and marketing push that TikTok is providing for the new album.
TikTok has returned to the bargaining table with Universal Music Group (UMG), but a fast-tracked Congressional bill that could result in the platform being sold, or, as a last result, banned in the United States may reach President Joe Biden’s desk before those negotiations are finished.
A source familiar with the talks says Bytedance — the Chinese company that owns TikTok — has returned to the bargaining table with UMG after the label group pulled its music from the social media platform at the end of January citing its refusal to address three “critical” issues: “appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters,” “protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI” and “online safety for TikTok’s users.”
It’s unclear whether any progress has resulted — neither UMG nor TikTok will comment — but ByteDance currently faces a more urgent, existential issue now that the Speaker of the House of Representatives has attached what’s being called the TikTok national security bill to the foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that is expected to move quickly through Congress. The House may vote on it as early this weekend and the Senate is expected to act quickly. If it passes in both houses, President Biden has promised to sign it immediately.
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Officially titled The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the proposed legislation was drawn up after White House national security and intelligence leaders briefed House lawmakers on the potential dangers that TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans, poses to the nation.
What the TikTok National Security Bill Does
If Biden signs the bill into law, ByteDance will have approximately a year from its enactment — the original bill gave it just 90 days — to sell TikTok to a buyer in a country that the United States does not consider a foreign adversary. If ByteDance, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party and is subject to its government, refuses to divest itself of TikTok or does not meet the deadline, then the app could be banned from being downloaded or used in the United States.
Rick Lane, TikTok Coalition.org leader and child safety advocate, says the TikTok bill “is moving forward very quickly. The language between the House and Senate is so close — they are millimeters apart, and I think agreements are being made to bring them together. Unless something drastic happens, I don’t see this bill’s momentum slowing down, no matter who’s on the other side. That is why adding it to the foreign aid bill makes sense.”
At a time when Congress is mired in ideological infighting, particularly among Republicans, the House of Representatives moved with remarkable speed to mark up and pass the bill and send it to the Senate.
Despite a deluge of calls and messages from TikTok users protesting the legislation, the House passed it, 352 votes to 65, on March 13 — less than a week after national security and intelligence officials held a classified briefing for an executive session of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A music industry source familiar with activity on Capitol Hill tells Billboard that, before the briefing started, “members and staffers devices were taken away, and the committee room’s AV systems and the like were removed.” Following the morning briefing, the committee marked up the bill that afternoon and voted unanimously to advance it to the full House of Representatives.
A classified intelligence briefing was also held in the Senate and prompted similar remarks of concern. Republican senator from Missouri Eric Schmitt told Axios that the Chinese-controlled platform’s “ability to spy is shocking.”
“We don’t know exactly what was briefed,” says the music industry source. “But what is absolutely crystal clear is that whatever has been presented to Congress members by the intelligence community is clearly driving this. You don’t see — particularly Congress members — reacting with that kind of dispatch and unanimity.”
A ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime’ Alarm
“This is really a once-in-a-lifetime kind of alarm,” the source adds. “People who have been around the Hill for decades don’t remember there ever being this level of concern.”
An unclassified 2024 Annual Threat Assessment issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in February may offer a glimpse of these security concerns. The assessment reported that “China is demonstrating a higher degree of sophistication in its influence activity, including experimenting with generative AI. TikTok accounts run by a [People’s Republic of China] propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.”
In response, a TikTok spokesperson referred Billboard to its written response to the ODNI, dated March 15, which asserts that the social media platform “regularly takes action against deceptive behavior, including covert influence networks throughout the world, and has been transparent in reporting them publicly. TikTok has protected our platform through more than 150 elections globally,” the response continues, “and is continuing to work with electoral commissions, experts, and fact-checkers to safeguard our community during this historic election year.”
In addition to the intelligence briefings, Billboard obtained a slide presentation that one Capitol Hill source says has been shown to staffers for over 40 senators. The presentation cobbles together previously published articles, analyses and reports about TikTok’s alleged dissemination of disinformation and propaganda to much of the same demographic that uses the app for music discovery. (According to a 2024 Pew Research Center report, 56% of U.S. adults 18 to 34 use the platform and 52% of the users in this age group have posted a video to the platform.)
‘TikTok Is a News Organization‘
As one tech policy expert says, “TikTok is a news organization. Trends are indicating that up to 40% of adults 18-to-29 will be getting their news from TikTok in 2024. It’s their CNN or Fox News or MSNBC.”
One of the first slides, titled “TikTok Has Rapidly Evolved From an Entertainment to a News Platform, Enormously Expanding Its Influence on The U.S. Population,” includes a graph built from Pew Research Center data that shows 43% of TikTok users regularly got their news from the platform in 2023, nearly double the 22% that did so in 2020. Only X (59%) and Facebook (54%) were higher. And nearly a third of that 43% were adults under 30 years of age.
Although music’s role in TikTok’s alleged dispersal of disinformation is not examined in the presentation, the tech policy expert says it’s definitely a factor. A 2023 report released by the rights management startup Pex in February revealed that 85% of TikTok videos contain music, more than YouTube (84%), Instagram (58%) and Facebook (49%), and the tech policy expert says that music played on the platform often functions as an emotional gateway to propaganda.
“The power of music is what draws people to social interaction,” the source says. “They’re taking music that gets people excited and, for instance, following them with horrific videos — and the interaction of those data points creates this powerful tool to affect policy.” The expert adds that TikTok’s algorithm enables the platform to essentially tailor its approach to each user. “It’s no longer just one size fits all; the ability now is to take visual cues, music and sound and target each individual with what sets them off — and they can do that on a massive scale.
“The argument in favor of TikTok is that Meta and Alphabet are collecting data from even more people, but they are not based in an adversarial country,” the expert continues. “There’s another key difference as well. TikTok sends you videos that they think you are interested in no matter what. Most young people want to be influencers. In order to be an influencer on TikTok, you have to follow what’s trending, so your video is blasted to more people. You tag along with feeds. In the policy realm, if they want to influence public policy, your view is going to be whatever direction that feed is going in.”
A TikTok spokesperson responds: “There is absolutely no evidence to these assertions. We have clear rules prohibiting deceptive behaviors.”
‘They Deserve It’
The music industry’s view of the proceedings in Washington is mixed. The perspective of artists and songwriters is arguably best expressed by David Lowery, the artist rights activist and frontman for the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, who also was one of more than 200 creators that, in early April, signed an open letter to tech platforms urging them to stop using AI “to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.”
“The rates TikTok pays artists are extremely low, and it has a history — at least with me — of using my catalog with no licenses,” Lowery says. “I just checked to make sure and there are plenty of songs that I wrote on TikTok, and I have no idea how they have a license for those songs.”
As a result, Lowery says that while “I’m kind of neutral as to whether TikTok needs to be sold to a U.S. owner, the bill pleases me in a general way because I feel that they’ve gotten away with abusing artists for so long that they deserve it. I realize the bill doesn’t punish them for doing that,” he continues, “but that’s why a lot of musicians feel they really deserve it.”
The consensus among label executives is that TikTok is not going anywhere, but were the app banned in the United States, they wouldn’t spill many tears. In early April, Billboard reported that two months after UMG pulled its music from TikTok, its market share and chart appearances had not been greatly affected. And though numerous UMG artists have devised workarounds to maintain a presence on TikTok, one senior label executive says, “When you’re looking at the competitive set for TikTok, you see a migration to YouTube, Instagram and Snap. And those platforms see a real opportunity, so they’re starting to lean in. The absence of TikTok would just mean migration to other platforms and, frankly, because those platforms monetize better, even if you lose a significant chunk of your audience, you’re still going to make more money.”
$8.7 Million For Lobbyists
Capitol Hill sources say ByteDance has enlisted a small army of lobbyists to keep TikTok on U.S. mobile devices. In 2023, ByteDance spent $8.7 million on lobbyists, according to the nonprofit government transparency organization OpenSecrets. That’s almost double the $4.9 million it dropped in 2022, although a TikTok spokesperson attributes the year-to-year increase to “a unique, one-time higher expenditure in the third quarter of 2023 that reflects the vesting of Restricted Stock Units related to the launch of our U.S. buyback program.” (Data for 2024 lobbyist expenditures were not available at publication time.)
That 2023 outlay was the fourth-highest amount spent on lobbyists by a tech company that year, behind Meta ($19.3 million); Amazon.com (nearly $19.3 million) and Alphabet (almost $12.4 million). In 2019, ByteDance spent less than $1 million on lobbyists.
Lobbyists hired by ByteDance include Rosemary Gutierrez, the former deputy chief of staff for Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee — which will review the TikTok legislation before a floor vote is taken — and Kellyanne Conway, former senior counselor to President Donald Trump. Conway is reportedly considering joining Trump’s reelection campaign, but last month, Politico reported that she was working for the conservative Club for Growth to lobby on TikTok’s behalf.
One of the Club for Growth’s biggest donors is billionaire Jeffrey Yass, who owns 15% of ByteDance, which is reportedly worth roughly $40 billion. Yass’ trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, is also the largest institutional shareholder — 2% — of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the former president’s Truth Social app, and took it public in late March. (The New York Times reported that it’s unclear if Susquehanna still owned the shares at the time of the IPO.)
Given Yass’ support of Trump, it’s not shocking that, after attempting to ban TikTok during his time in office, Trump has said on social media and in interviews that though he still considers TikTok a national security risk, he has reconsidered banning the platform. One reason he has cited is that such a move would benefit Meta and its social media app Facebook. Trump has made no secret of his enmity for Meta’s chairman/CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, which banned him in 2021. (Trump was reinstated in 2023.)
The Taylor Factor
The news last week that Taylor Swift had restored her Taylor’s Version songs to TikTok in the run-up to the April 19 release of her new album The Tortured Poets Department led to speculation that the superstar singer-songwriter — who has often spoken out for artists’ rights — could be weaponized by TikTok in its standoff with UMG. In Washington, however, TikTok Coalition leader Lane says, “Taylor Swift being or not being on TikTok has never come up in any meeting I’ve been in on Capitol Hill.” He sees Swift’s return to the app as “a business decision” that’s no different than President Biden’s and Congress members’ presence on the app, or even UMG’s continued talks with TikTok. “It doesn’t diminish the strong bipartisan/bicameral support within Congress and the White House that TikTok is a clear and present danger to the U.S. national security and needs to be divested from ByteDance,” he says.
Trump’s sway over the GOP has some on Capitol Hill predicting that passage of the TikTok National Security bill in concert with the foreign aid package is not a slam dunk. “It’s hard to say how it’s going to play on the Republican side,” says the music industry source familiar with the Capitol Hill proceedings. “Because while they’re feeling pressure from the former President on one hand to oppose the bill, they are also feeling heat from their constituents to support it.”
On Jan. 30, the day before Universal Music’s deal with TikTok lapsed, the company announced in an open letter that “we must call time out on TikTok,” for not paying rightsholders and creators enough. Universal immediately began removing its recordings from the platform — then, by the end of February, took down every composition to which it had some rights. Essentially, Universal went to war for the value of music, to benefit not only it and its artists and songwriters, it said, but the entire industry. And although the two other major labels declined to comment at the time, Primary Wave, Downtown and Hipgnosis publicly backed Universal, and in late March Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer told the Financial Times that he did not rule out taking the same action as Universal.
Not Taylor Swift, though.
Trending on Billboard
By April 11, a little over a week before the release of Swift’s new album —The Tortured Poets Department, which comes out April 19 — songs from Swift’s albums to which she owns the rights were available on TikTok. Which made for an uncomfortable conversation, you’d have to imagine — and that’s about all you can do, because neither Universal nor Swift’s representative would comment and TikTok could not be reached for comment.
It seems that Swift’s contract with Universal allows her to either license the recordings she owns herself or somehow opt out of label licensing policies, which is an unusual amount of independence. Usually acts with that kind of leverage choose to leave their music off of new services — the Beatles waiting to offer their music on the iTunes Store is the classic example — or strike some kind of exclusive deal, like Garth Brooks did with Amazon Music. It’s hard to think of another example where a label announced it was going one way and its biggest artist — although she hasn’t said anything about her decision — went another.
That’s a big deal. Eventually, Universal’s other megastars — think Morgan Wallen, Drake, or The Weeknd — might want that same freedom or start to think about using whatever freedom they already have. Some artists have more power than others, though: Swift’s contract is generally thought to be more like a distribution deal, where she owns her new recordings, including the Taylor’s Versions of her old albums, but licenses them to Universal. Also, with 18.9 million album consumption units in 2023, more than some divisions of major labels, she has more market power than any other artist.
Given TikTok’s relatively low payouts, many executives assume that Swift appreciates the platform’s promotional value, even though she doesn’t exactly need it — Tortured Poets would almost certainly be the biggest album of the year either way. There’s also speculation that she wants to reach out to younger fans with shorter attention spans.
This reasoning seems to go against Swift’s reputation for sticking up for the value of music more broadly, as she did when she declined to release her 1989 album on Spotify, pushed Apple Music to pay rightsholders for plays during the service’s free trial period and insisted that Universal pay artists their share of the proceeds from its Spotify stock sales whether their deals had recouped or not. “This is not about me,” she wrote about the Apple situation at the time, but rather about emerging artists. What happens to them now? It has even been suggested that Swift essentially crossed a picket line of sorts.
That’s a bit much. The concept of a picket line implies a situation in which people who are paid on a scale are bargaining collectively, and that’s not the case here. And it’s not Swift’s responsibility to fight for the overall health of the music business — she’s an artist and she’s already done far more than most. For that matter, there’s more to creators’ rights than the size of a check. If you think about the way Swift re-recorded her old albums, she may place as much value on control — not only how much she makes on an album, but who owns it, how they present it, and where and under what circumstances it can be heard. I’m not sure whether her decision about making her music available on TikTok is the right one, but I am completely positive that it’s not mine to make.
This is all based on the assumption that Swift’s agreement with TikTok is vaguely similar to the one labels have, but that may not be the case. If you think about Swift’s instinct for navigating the music business, her deal could be much better — perhaps with an advance or guaranteed minimum or other kinds of considerations. (Just to be clear, I have no idea.) If you were, or managed, an artist with that kind of market share, what would you ask for? And if you worked for TikTok, facing political pressure in the U.S., as well as a difficult negotiation with the biggest music company in the world, how much would you be willing to offer?
In the modern media business, market share doesn’t just create efficiency — it also offers important negotiating leverage, especially with technology companies that operate on a global scale. That’s why music and film companies are buying rivals, getting deeper into the distribution business, and pursuing growth so aggressively in the first place. Swift may be the only artist there is who can offer real scale by herself, built on recordings she owns herself, so labels don’t need to worry about this becoming a trend. But whatever Swift’s decision means for the industry at large, it seems somewhat inevitable that she would pursue, and at some point use, the power her market share gives her — just as the major labels do.
