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When licensing negotiations between TikTok and the Universal Music Group collapsed at the end of January, many official recordings from UMG artists vanished from the platform. UMG chief digital officer/executive vp Michael Nash told financial analysts in February that the company had been “providing notices to effectuate the muting of millions of videos every day for the last two weeks.” Yet a number of songs connected to UMG — or its publishing wing, Universal Music Publishing Group — remain available on TikTok anyway.
Some are user uploads, which might theoretically be harder to find and take down or mute. Others are official tracks, including recent releases from prominent stars and fast-moving viral hits. And much of Taylor Swift’s catalog returned to TikTok on Thursday (April 11), raising the question of how other artists may be able to find workarounds while the licensing dispute continues.
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One possible reason that some songs are staying on TikTok: Several artist lawyers tell Billboard they are devising contractual carve-outs to allow their clients to keep their music on the platform. Others note that even though they haven’t added these clauses to recording agreements yet, it has become a topic of conversation with their clients.
“Some labels are allowing some of their artists to exclude newly created music from the grant of rights until the label has a deal in place” with TikTok, says David Fritz, founding partner at Boyarski Fritz. “Because the issue is so new, we are developing on the fly to meet the needs of talent — songwriters and artists — that want their music on TikTok. This is an issue, and workaround, that came about solely as a result of UMG taking down its catalog from TikTok.”
Reps for UMG and TikTok declined to comment.
Some artists have invested years of their life building a following on TikTok. (Predecessor Musical.ly was acquired by Bytedance in 2017 and then relaunched in the United States as TikTok the year after.) For more than two months now, they’ve been unable to share official recordings with those fans on the platform — the same fans who may have earned them their major-label deal in the first place.
“Some artists are concerned about this,” says Josh Binder, founding partner at Rothenberg Mohr & Binder. “They don’t want to be uncompetitive, unable to use TikTok to muster up an audience.”
“TikTok is mostly used as a new-music discovery tool — discover a clip on TikTok, listen to it on a DSP,” Fritz adds. “So those who are trying to get their music discovered are the most concerned” about being unable to promote new songs on the app.
In 2022, MIDiA Research found that TikTok was the second-biggest driver of music discovery for Gen Z, after YouTube. In recent months, TikTok popularity has helped little-known acts like Dasha, Good Neighbours and the Red Clay Strays explode at streaming services — leading to major-label deals — and contributed to breakout hits for Djo, Flo Milli and Benson Boone, among others.
UMG pushed back against the idea that TikTok has a lock on discovery during its most recent earnings call. Chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge told financial analysts that TikTok was “not a material part of the multidisciplinary jigsaw where we promote and market our music globally.” And UMG CFO/executive vp Boyd Muir said that UMG would “focus on accelerating [its] partnerships” with other social media platforms, including Meta, Snap and YouTube, to provide alternative promotional avenues for its artists.
But the job of an artist lawyer — a good one, at least — is to help their client get what they want. Labels typically aim to control as many rights as they can for as long as they can. In the modern music business, artists have more ability to push back; because they can generate momentum on their own, without a record company’s help, more aspects of a record deal are negotiable. “You can cherry-pick what you want to be in your contract to some degree,” Scott Booker, the longtime manager of The Flaming Lips, recently told Billboard.
As with any negotiation, artists’ ability to get their preferred terms comes down to their leverage — for stars especially, there are few rules that can’t be bent — and the skill of the lawyers involved. “If you successfully reserve the right to license to TikTok directly in your contract with UMG, you would be able to do so directly or via a third-party service,” says Leon Morabia, a partner at Mark Music & Media Law. “It would be a difficult point to win in a deal, but it is contractually feasible.”
Josh Love, partner at Reed Smith, says he has been able to get “a carve-out” in the past that allowed an artist “to do a direct license with a DSP” — a digital service provider like TikTok or another social media or streaming service — “if the label or distributor is ever not licensed with that DSP and [the artist] wants to remain on the platform.” This is meant to act as interim coverage for an artist; if the label or distributor were to form a new licensing agreement, that would likely supersede that deal made between the artist and the DSP in the meantime.
Some clauses that are already in record deals could also be expanded by artist attorneys to ensure their clients’ music remains available on TikTok. “Release commitments,” for example, are put in place to “force the label to guarantee that a record will be released within certain months after delivery so that the artist’s record doesn’t get ’shelved,’ with the artist stuck in the deal,” says Gandhar Savur, a music attorney.
These clauses have become increasingly comprehensive, stretching “to cover commitments by the label over more specific aspects of the release — the exact countries in which the album will be distributed, formats that the album will be released in such as vinyl and digital, and even including specific major DSPs by name like Spotify and Apple Music.” After negotiations between UMG and TikTok unraveled, Savur continues, “it would be a natural response that artist attorneys will gradually start to require release commitments to cover all platforms generally so that if a label is not licensed with a particular platform for any reason, the artist can deal with that platform directly.”
Savur believes that artists who are signed to labels that are distributed by UMG, rather than signed directly, probably have more latitude to try to deal with platforms like TikTok on their own. “Although I believe that what Universal is doing overall is a good thing for the industry, Universal-distributed labels might be more sympathetic to their artists’ desire to stay on TikTok because the increased streaming and ticket sales [that] result from any tracks going viral on the platform can be a big win for the artist and label alike,” Savur says.
If the UMG-TikTok deadlock rolls on, Fritz says, “smart lawyers” with leverage will find “a workaround that enables their clients to continue to use the most popular discovery tool while the large-scale license gets worked out.”
Much of Taylor Swift‘s discography is back on TikTok on Thursday (April 11), returning a little over a week before the anticipated release of her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, due out April 19.
Official audio for hits like “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version),” “Cruel Summer” and “Style (Taylor’s Version)” are among the songs now available for users to make videos with on the short-form app. It appears that there are no official audio for Swift’s songs released before her album Lover, meaning the original recordings from Fearless, Speak Now and Red — recorded for the Big Machine record label — are not available, though her recent re-recordings of those albums are.
Swift’s catalog was pulled from TikTok at the start of February after the parent company for her record label and publisher, Universal Music Group, announced that it was letting its licensing agreement with TikTok lapse, citing that the app was not willing to pay for the “fair value” of music, as well as other concerns like AI and artist safety. That affected songs by many of music’s biggest stars, including Swift, Drake, SZA, Olivia Rodrigo and more, who all have recording and/or publishing contracts with the company.
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For Swift, the ownership of her Big Machine catalog has been the subject of much conversation in recent years. Her first six albums — covering her self-titled debut in 2006 through 2017’s Reputation — were sold to Scooter Braun in 2019 after the manager and entrepreneur’s Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine in a deal worth more than $300 million.
That sparked a backlash from Swift, who vowed to re-record each of those albums in order to re-release them and own the recordings herself; she has since released “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings of Fearless, Red, Speak Now and 1989. In 2018, Swift signed a deal with UMG to license her future recordings to Republic Records, and has since released four additional albums through that deal, the copyrights to which she also owns. While it’s unclear why her recordings are back on TikTok, it’s notable that the tracks that she owns are the ones that are available.
In a letter to its artists on Jan. 30 explaining the licensing spat, UMG wrote, “With respect to the issue of artist and songwriter compensation, TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay.”
TikTok fired back at UMG’s announcement hours later, saying, “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
In addition to her label deal with Republic Records, Swift has been signed to Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) as a songwriter since 2020; previously, she was signed to Sony Music Publishing as a songwriter. Her frequent collaborator, Jack Antonoff, was also signed to Sony Music Publishing until he switched to UMPG in August 2023.
Reps for TikTok, Universal and UMPG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
They love artists, they’ve got money to burn, and they’re the music industry’s new obsession: Say hello to superfans.
In January alone, Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl called for “stok[ing] the blue flames of superfans” and additional “direct artist-superfan products and experiences”; Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge highlighted the value of “superfan experiences and products”; and Spotify hinted at future “superfan clubs” in a blog post.
The following month, leaders at Interscope and Live Nation shouted out superfans. That was all before Joon Choi, president of the Korean fan platform Weverse, one-upped everyone by telling Music Business Worldwide that “the potential for growth in the superfan business and economy is limitless.” Stoke those blue flames right, and they’ll never stop burning.
All this runaway enthusiasm about superfans “goes back to that Goldman Sachs article,” says Mike Biggane, a former UMG executive and founder of Big Effect, which is developing technology designed to help smaller artist teams. Last summer, the financial institution posited that superfans — Luminate defines this group as listeners who “engage with artists and their content in five-plus different ways” — could inject more than $4 billion into the music industry by 2030.
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Goldman’s report also noted that the music business struggles “to fully monetize its content.” Nearly everyone listens to music, but the industry’s value pales next to that of gaming, for example. Games “have been more agile in terms of innovating and adopting ways to generate new revenue streams,” says Ben Sumner, managing director at Feel for Music, which helps games and brands with music supervision.
But for labels and streaming services, collecting new revenue from superfans may be easier said than done. “People are trying to find a simple way to mine fandom,” says Mike Pelczynski, one of the architects of SoundCloud’s “fan-powered royalties,” a payout system that aligns streaming revenue more closely with fandom. “It’s good for investors to hear, but it’s not simple. Every platform is different.”
Not only that: “So much of the conversation is about how to extract more out of the superfan, which I think is a big mistake,” says Bernie Cahill, founding partner of Activist Artists Management. “If you take care of them, you will get far more value out of that relationship than you will by selling them another piece of vinyl or a T-shirt.”
Pelczynski believes that “superfans want to be closer to, and most importantly seen by, their favorite artist.” They also clearly gain from their connections with like-minded enthusiasts — working together to orchestrate fundraising campaigns to support the acts they love, for example. Luminate found that superfans are 43% more likely than the average listener to say they “like to participate in the community” that springs up around an act.
These communities are defined by artist-to-fan and fan-to-fan relationships. It’s not immediately clear where labels can squeeze in.
And it’s notable that, historically, labels actually excel at reaching passive fans. A record label is unmatched when it comes to taking a song that’s connecting with audiences in one space and making it so ubiquitous that it becomes inescapable, the kind of thing that casual listeners run into at the gym and the supermarket. “We can reach Fall Out Boy‘s superfans pretty easily,” says Jonathan Daniel, co-founder of Crush Management (FOB, Miley Cyrus, Lorde and others). “When they have a song that raises its hand above the superfans, different opportunities come for them, and that’s where you really need the label — they’re great at taking it really wide.”
What’s more, in an age of artist empowerment, it’s hard to imagine many acts ceding control of their superfan communities to record companies. “Smart artists really curate a direct connection themselves,” Cahill says — they know their diehard followers keep them afloat. (It’s jarring to hear executives say things like “fandom is the future,” as if it wasn’t also the past.)
These days, due to the fact that artists can record, distribute and market themselves all on the cheap, they usually amass a dedicated following before they even sign to a label. This tends to give them a lot of sway in contract negotiations, and as a result, 360 deals — where labels take a share of the money that artists make from touring and merchandise sales, for example — are out of favor with young managers and lawyers, limiting record companies’ ability to cash in on superfans’ passion.
Nonetheless, to the extent that labels can encourage superfans to stream more or buy additional vinyl variants, they stand to gain financially. All the major labels also own merch companies, so if they can stoke demand for t-shirts that are subsequently manufactured by their own outlets, that’s another win. And UMG recently invested in Weverse and NTWRK’s acquisition of Complex, allowing it to benefit indirectly from superfandom.
Warner has another plan altogether: In February, Kyncl said that he’s “assembled a team of incredible technology talent” to construct “an app where artists can connect directly with their superfans.” While he hasn’t shared any additional details on what this will look like, users would presumably only have access to Warner artists on a Warner superfan platform. However, most listeners probably also want to connect with some acts signed elsewhere, to the extent they even know what labels their favorite artists are signed to.
The other hurdle for new superfan apps, or streaming platforms trying to add new superfan features, is all the existing options: The majority of artists already try to interact with their most passionate fans on TikTok, Instagram, Discord, Reddit and more. As a result, “artists’ time is very scarce,” says Roneil Rumburg, co-founder and CEO at Audius, a blockchain-based streaming service which enabled direct payments from fans to artists last year.
If more streamers try rolling out superfan features — SoundCloud, for example, allowed acts to message their top fans last year — then artists’ time will be crunched even further, as each platform will presumably require a different approach to engagement. In fact, Kyncl used exactly this reasoning to justify Warner’s venture into platform building. Artists “don’t want to optimize just for one platform over another,” he said.
“The few companies that are trying to build their own ecosystems, I applaud it,” Pelczynski says. However, “I think it’s going to be very challenging to make something that people will be willing to spend their time on and add to their daily usual behaviors.”
Like labels, the most prominent streaming services have spent a lot of time in the past decade figuring out how to serve music up to passive fans. (Spotify once had a messaging system, but it was discontinued in 2017 due to “very low engagement.”) They have had success using various recommendation methods — editorial playlists, algorithmic playlists — to ensure that people keep listening.
But a new generation of listeners appears less interested in throwing an editorial playlist on in the background. Younger, more engaged fans like to slow down their favorite artist’s track, mash it up, or duet with it, leading to the proliferation of homemade re-works across social media platforms.
“For the first time ever, an artist can put a song out and it might be a fan-created flavor of it that connects,” says Gaurav Sharma, founder of Hook, a platform that helps rightsholders monetize user-generated remixes. “Community is being built around music on social media, and fan remixing is a way to be unique in that expression.” It may be hard for major streaming services to cater to this type of fandom, though, due to rights issues: Labels probably aren’t going to condone unauthorized remixes on prominent music streamers. (This is the problem Hook is trying to solve.)
There has also been speculation around the industry about streaming services charging superfans extra for early access to music, a tactic that calls back to the exclusive album windows of a decade ago. That said, “fans expect a LOT of value to justify a monthly fee, especially with subscription fatigue,” according to a recent (subsequently deleted) tweet from Emily White, a former Spotify and Billboard employee whose “team was exploring artist fan clubs.”
Still, despite all the potential obstacles, “We’re seeing a lot of momentum on the institutional music side to figure this out and do it quickly,” Rumburg says, before adding a note of caution: “When so many hopes and dreams get injected into one word or concept, there’s no way it ever lives up to the hype.”
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The latest dance taking over New York City is the “Reemski,” and its Brooklyn creator and the Bronx rapper whose song its associated with are ecstatic over its popularity.
If you’re tapped into the latest dance trends in New York City, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the “Reemski.” Gaining viral popularity thanks to posts with over 1 million views and counting on TikTok and on X, formerly Twitter, the dance has gained new forms including as a joke on the performance of the MTA for example, and being banned in the Russian republic of Chechnya as part of activities that are at too fast of a tempo. Even Kai Cenat has picked up on it. The dance’s creator, Kareem Gadson, is happy with all of it.
“I just got tired of doing the dances that I was seeing out here,” Gadson said of creating the hit dance, which he says he did in 2016. “So I just decided to do my own.”
The aspiring rapper from Brooklyn calls his dance the “Reemski” because the leg movements are similar to those of downhill skiers. “As you getting low you have to move sideways like you’re skiing,” Gadson says. The dance is normally done to the Cash Cobain track “Fisherrr,” a collaboration song with Bay Swag, and requires the dancer to get lower to the ground by bending their knees as the bass drop of the song comes in while moving their chest and shoulders in unison. “If you ever watch someone skiing and then you watch my dance, then you will go ‘OK, I see what story you’re talking about.’”
For Elijah Hicks, the man who utilized the “Reemski” in a joke about Jesus walking out of the tomb, he suggests not being too caught up in the technical parts of the dance. “You just roll your shoulders, but it’s about the drop,” he said. “The drop is what makes it fun. It’s all in like one motion. Everybody can do it, because it’s so easy to do,” before adding, “Your grandmother and your grandfather could do it. All they gotta do is roll their shoulders.”
Gadson is particularly pleased that the dance hasn’t gotten any infamous attachments. “I like that it doesn’t have anything to do with violence,” he said in an interview. “It’s got a lot to do with just having fun and enjoying yourself.” As for Cash Cobain, he’s enjoying the dance because of the associated fame for his single, calling the timing of the “Reemski” going viral “perfect.”
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When Ariana Grande released her latest album eternal sunshine, one of its most beloved tracks, “the boy is mine,” became an instant dance trend on TikTok. At any other moment, a viral trend around a major pop star’s new song would seem obvious, even normal. But amidst the licensing feud between TikTok and Grande’s record label Universal Music Group, it’s a surprise to find the song on TikTok at all.
Grande’s music is not alone in sticking around on the app far past the expiration of UMG’s last license, which lapsed at the end of January. Thanks to clever tactics by fans, artists and their teams, some notable UMG-affiliated songs have been able to effectively skirt the company’s TikTok boycott. While it helps promote these songs individually, trying to get around the ban also has a knock-on effect for songwriters — and supplies UMG hits to TikTok without the app paying a cent.
An Olivia Rodrigo fan under the username LouLiv recently uploaded Rodrigo’s new single “so american” to TikTok as an “original sound,” and Rodrigo herself used the sound in a few recent TikToks, helping boost the song’s visibility. Grande’s fans have also been creating various versions of “the boy is mine” on TikTok, which has helped spread the song on the app, as well as other tracks from eternal sunshine.
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These original sounds often manipulate the official recording, changing the speed, pitch and/or title of the song to help them slip past TikTok’s detection technology, which is used to automatically catch songs, like UMG’s, that are not licensed to be on the app. A source close to the matter says that TikTok’s detection technology combs for metadata provided by UMG and UMPG and then removes the content. But the remaining original sounds that don’t get automatically wiped from TikTok are so widespread that it can sometimes feel like UMG never left the app at all.
The songs are not hard to find, either. The most popular sound for Rodrigo’s “so american,” for example, is straightforwardly titled “so american” and already has 33,400 videos created with the song to date. The most-used original audio for “the boy is mine” was recently removed after weeks on TikTok, a sign that UMG is issuing takedowns for some original sounds using their catalog. But multiple other original audios for the song remain, including “the boy is mine” by star and “the boy is mine sped up” by satvrn, amounting to over 100,000 videos made to original sounds of the song on TikTok and counting.
For songwriters, there are negative consequences. In two separate text and email chains reviewed by Billboard, non-UMG recording artists that have worked on recent or upcoming releases with UMPG songwriters have asked the track’s songwriters to withhold information about who wrote the song at the time of a track’s release to try to skirt the UMG TikTok ban — and the songwriters have agreed.
Though the two sources who provided correspondence to Billboard wished to remain anonymous to protect their clients, Lucas Keller, founder/CEO of Milk & Honey and manager to a number of songwriters and producers, confirmed that this is happening to songwriters. “Sometimes there’s a song coming out and there’s four writers, and one of them is UMPG, and someone steps forward and says, ‘Hey, can you not get in the way of this one? Can we register this in like three months?’” Keller says. “Then the song can be used on TikTok. It’s an interesting dark corner of the business that’s emerged.”
It is common for tracks to be released without submitting the proper publishing “splits,” meaning the names of the writers and what the percentage of ownership each holds, given these negotiations can be lengthy and sometimes contentious. But in the cases Keller and the other two sources discussed with Billboard, the songs’ publishing splits were ready to go and could have been submitted on time. The only reason they weren’t was to allow the artist to promote it on TikTok.
Michelle Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Songwriters of North America (SONA), says these asks by artists put songwriters in a bad position. “Songwriters are the least equipped to negotiate, the lowest on the food chain in these discussions,” Lewis says. She worries songwriters don’t feel like they have the ability to push back on these asks if they want to. Meanwhile, leaving out this key information could threaten the songwriters’ ability to get paid royalties from streaming services on time if the parties hold out longer than a few months.
Lewis, Keller and three artist managers who wished to remain anonymous, all tell Billboard that some artists are also “thinking twice” about inviting UMPG writers to sessions. “I have also heard about Universal writers not being invited to camps,” Lewis says; while it’s unclear how often this is occurring, Keller says it “is absolutely happening.” Adds Lewis, “It’s so uncool. If you’re not including Universal writers, you’re basically crossing the picket line. You’re weakening [UMG’s position].”
A UMPG spokesperson declined to comment on its songwriters facing these specific effects from the TikTok feud, but pointed to its letter to songwriters on Feb. 29, which read in part, “We understand the disruption is difficult for some of you and your careers, and we are sensitive to how this may affect you.”
Some official recordings with UMPG writers, like “Texas Hold Em” by Beyonce, who is affiliated with Sony’s Columbia Records, still remain on TikTok for unknown reasons. That song, which is currently ranked at No. 5 on Billboard’s TikTok Viral 50, was co-written by UMPG’s Raphael Saadiq, as were other songs on Beyonce’s new album Cowboy Carter that remain on the platform.
“Texas Hold Em” and some other tracks by Beyonce have a large number of songwriters — which is one major reason why publishing information is often submitted late — so it is possible that TikTok hasn’t removed the track because it doesn’t have verification that it is in any way affiliated with UMPG. Strangely, however, this track was taken down from TikTok briefly and then reappeared days later. When asked why “Texas Hold Em” was available on TikTok despite its clear ties to UMPG, neither TikTok nor UMPG responded to Billboard’s requests for comment.
Regardless of how these songs avoided an automatic removal from TikTok, UMG could have requested that these popular tracks and original sounds be taken down by now. Rights holders are able to manually request takedowns of content on TikTok that they believe infringe on their copyrights, like the original sounds for Grande and Rodrigo and songs like “Texas Hold Em,” and TikTok is required to remove them to remain in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
But tracking down all infringing content and requesting takedowns, especially for a catalog of millions like UMG’s, is known to be a tedious task. As UMG put it in its original letter to artists and songwriters, it is “monumentally cumbersome” and “the digital equivalent of ‘Whack-A-Mole.’” Michael Nash, the company’s executive vp of digital strategy, also added on an earnings call on Feb. 28 that the company had sent requests to “effectuate muting of millions of videos every day.” However, it is possible to get infringing tracks removed if that is the rights holders’ wish.
“This is not a united front,” Lewis says. “It feels indicative of our industry overall. We can never get along, and the individual creator is the one who gets hurt… It’s totally not fair for songwriters, but this is all beneath the top line concern, which is that TikTok completely underpays, undervalues songwriters. That’s number one. They’re the ones who started this.”
There’s little doubt that TikTok drives the discovery of new and unfamiliar music. Exactly how much engagement it creates downstream — at on-demand music streaming platforms — is less clear.
It’s been roughly two months since Universal Music Group announced its decision to remove its catalog from TikTok after the companies’ licensing agreement ended on Jan. 31. To see if its absence from TikTok has hurt UMG’s streaming numbers, Billboard looked at Luminate’s weekly market shares for UMG, as well as for Sony Music and Warner Music Group, going back to the beginning of 2023.
The conclusion? Thus far, there’s no clear evidence that UMG’s U.S. market share has been affected by its catalog’s removal from the wildly popular platform. Since the week ended Feb. 8 through the week ended Mar. 28, UMG’s market share has not deviated from what could be considered normal trends. Importantly, the company has not suffered a major blow — either in market share or chart appearances — while absent from TikTok.
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In the eight weeks since TikTok started pulling UMG catalog following the lapse of their licensing agreement, UMG’s overall on-demand audio streaming market share (using a moving four-week average to smooth out fluctuations) dropped 1.8% — not 1.8 percentage points — from 38.72% to 38.02%. Most of that drop came from a 5.8% decline (from 34.42% to 32.43%) in market share of current (less than 18 months old) titles — an entirely normal fluctuation that reflects the ebbs and flows of any music company’s new release schedule. Since early 2023, the eight-week change in UMG’s current market share (again, using a moving four-week average) has dipped more than 5% five times. Sony Music experienced a 5% or greater decline six times. Warner Music Group saw it happen seven times.
Catalog (music over 18 months old) market share is less driven by music companies’ new release schedules but also tends to see small increases and decreases. In the eight weeks ended March 28, UMG’s catalog market share declined 0.8% (from 40.01% to 39.7%). That wasn’t atypical; WMG dropped 0.9% over the same period. Going back to the beginning of 2023, UMG’s catalog market share gained more than 1% six times and fell by more than 1% four times. UMG’s competitors saw their catalog market shares fluctuate by more than 1% more times than UMG.
Given the importance of on-demand audio streaming to record labels, a loss in market share would hit UMG in the pocketbook. In 2023, UMG’s record labels received about $6.17 billion in royalties from streaming, according to its 2023 annual report. Just a 5% decline in streaming revenue is worth over $300 million annually. TikTok, on the other hand, is a relatively small part of UMG’s business. The previous licensing deal with TikTok was worth about 1% of UMG’s annual revenue, CFO Boyd Muir stated in the company’s Feb. 28 earnings call — equal to $120 million annually based on 2023’s total revenue.
TikTok has a well-earned reputation for driving chart success for tracks — from Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” to Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” — by raising their profiles and creating downstream traffic at on-demand streaming services. A 2023 TikTok study conducted by Luminate found that higher TikTok engagement corresponds with elevated streaming volumes and that U.S. TikTok users are more likely than average consumers to both stream music and subscribe to a music streaming service. TikTok engagement went offline, too: The study found that 38% of TikTok users in the U.S. went to a show in the last 12 months and that 45% bought some merchandise — suggesting higher-than-normal levels of engagement with music.
But there’s evidence that TikTok is less valuable to music discovery than music streaming services that still offer UMG’s catalog. TikTok users who would potentially discover UMG’s music “still have a lot of ways to find new music and new artists in the absence of TikTok,” MusicWatch managing partner Russ Crupnick tells Billboard via email, “though admittedly it’s an important option.” MusicWatch has found that TikTok users are three times as likely to cite their favorite streaming service as the top source for music discovery as they are TikTok. And two-thirds of TikTok users say music streaming services are a source for hearing new songs and new artists; 49% of TikTok users cite TikTok as a favorite for finding new music.
Still, an absence from TikTok means UMG’s artists aren’t reaching young consumers where they spend much of their time. TikTok is an especially popular option for teens, notes MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano. A MIDiA survey of U.S. consumers found that 24% of all people surveyed listen to songs they first heard on TikTok on a monthly basis. That number jumps to 52% for 16-to-19-year-olds, and 55% of people in that age group say TikTok is one the top three places where they discover new music — ahead of YouTube (47%) and music streaming services (36%).
Looking at only streaming market share data does not capture the full picture, though. It’s entirely possible that UMG has been hurt by its absence from TikTok in other ways. If its catalog were available at TikTok, UMG could have had one or more out-of-left-field viral hits thanks to the unsolicited usage of its music by TikTok users. After all, TikTok can surface old music in expected ways.
What’s more, two months is also too little time to draw any grand conclusions. “The constant fluctuation in release schedules as well as the ever-evolving ways that consumers use social apps mean that it will be necessary to assess over a much longer timescale,” Chaz Jenkins, Chartmetric’s chief commercial officer, tells Billboard in an email. Additionally, Billboard examined market share in the U.S. only. Global market share data would tell a fuller picture.
Besides, some artists have found ways to work around the ban. As Billboard reported in February, artists are doing acoustic versions of songs, speeding up the recordings’ tempos and posting interviews to stay in front of their fans. “Artists impacted by this are just being more creative on TikTok about how they’re getting music out,” said Shopkeeper Management digital marketing manager Laura Spinelli.
For all of TikTok’s promotional value and ability to break hits, the app might be more of a silo than people think: MIDiA also found that 76% of consumers who said TikTok is a main source of music discovery don’t seek information on an artist after finding a song on the app. In other words, what happens on TikTok often stays on TikTok. Let’s see if the impact of UMG’s absence from the app will be just as contained.
Independent Music Companies Association (IMPALA) has released a statement detailing its position on TikTok and the proposed changes to the payment models for music streaming, and how this will affect its members. Founded in 2000, the advocacy group has 6000 members, stemming from Europe’s small music businesses.
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With regards to TikTok, the organization says it is aligned with Universal Music Group and its decision to let its license with TikTok lapse due to low compensation and AI concerns. “IMPALA supports UMG’s stance on TikTok in relation to valuing music properly,” say the organization’s chair of streaming group and CEO of Everlasting Records and Popstock Distribuciones, Mark Kitcatt. “The independent community has adopted a similar approach at various points over the years with other services, from MTV to Apple to YouTube. We also reject arguments equating the use of music on TikTok to promotion.”
IMPALA’s stance on TikTok’s lack of policing for AI generated content is also similar to what UMG addressed in its letter to artists and writers when it announced its plan to leave the platform. “services need permission for the use of music, including soundalikes and AI adaptations. The new AI framework in Europe also helps set human-centred guide rails in this regard,” says Helen Smith, executive director of IMPALA.
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IMPALA also notes that it has concerns with how some streaming services — including Spotify, Deezer and Apple — are changing their payments models to artists and labels. “Adjustments can be made [by Deezer, Spotify and Apple] to avoid harm,” says the organization. IMPALA calls for a better seat at the table for smaller music companies. “Any changes in how revenue is allocated [should] be properly assessed by services in terms of the impact they create over the whole market… We also call on streaming services to consult and discuss this with their independent licensing partners before the decision is made.”
Detractors of Deezer and Spotify’s new royalty payment models say that adding a threshold for a minimum number of streams that an artist has to reach before qualifying for payment is unfair to smaller artists and companies that represent them. Also, streaming companies are considering or are already adding in penalties for music companies that facilitate music involved in streaming manipulation and fraud. For distributors that services a large scale of DIY talent in particular, this could have an outsized impact on their businesses,
To get ahead of these problems, some distributors have joined together to form the Music Fights Fraud coalition, including TuneCore, Distrokid, and CD Baby, to come up with best practices for fighting bad actors that sign up for their platforms and to establish a common database to share information on the fraudsters each service catches. IMPALA says it supports Music Fights Fraud and that addressing maniplation is a “priority” for the organization and its members.
Chair of IMPALA and head of Balkans association RUNDA, Dario Drastata, adds: “IMPALA supports collaborative reform that is sustainable and drives diversity. We seek urgent solutions to address manipulation and revenue dilution. We also need to make sure the proposals are fair to all, and we hope Merlin’s recent agreement with Deezer will contribute to this objective. It’s the only way to create a sustainable ecosystem. We believe for example that there are simple solutions for problems with thresholds that can be plugged in and will continue our constructive discussions with services to explore options. Finding the answers will ensure services are able to further develop opportunities in key markets and genres as well as across multiple languages.”
Helen Smith says, “IMPALA’s work is vital for Europe’s music economy. Independents account for over 80% of the sectors’ new releases and jobs, providing stable and exciting opportunities for artists, fans and music employees across Europe. This was also reconfirmed at IMPALA’s AGM last year, including the elimination of value gaps, and developing the digital market in all territories with great talent, huge audiences and untapped digital potential, such as in Central and Eastern Europe. “
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 first Billboard album review below, for Beyoncé’s just-released Cowboy Carter album.
“People don’t make albums anymore,” Beyoncé declared in her 2013 HBO documentary Life Is But a Dream. “They just try to sell a bunch of lil quick singles. And they burn out, and they put out a new one, and they burn out, and they put out a new one.” She was right, finding a real “album” is becoming scarcer in the age of streaming, where songs with shorter run lengths are viewed as more “streamable.” A real album might be hard to find, but luckily we have Beyoncé, and boy does Beyoncé make a good one.
Beyoncé’s eighth studio album, the country-influenced and genre-defying Cowboy Carter, is a tour de force and yet another example of Beyoncé’s innate ability to put together an album. Much like Renaissance, most of the songs blend beautifully into each other, almost forcing the modern listener to hear the album in order — exactly how Beyoncé intended it. This is especially notable in the jump from the “Dolly P” interlude to Beyoncé’s stunning reworking of Parton’s classic “Jolene.” Instead of Parton’s infamous “begging” of Jolene to not take her man, Beyoncé changes the narrative — she’s not begging you; she’s warning you. It’s a perfect rendition of the classic song in 2024. We’ve heard a million and one versions of superstars “begging” for the villainous Jolene to not take their man, but Beyoncé isn’t most superstars, and she’s not going to beg; she’s going to tell you.
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Beyoncé follows up her rendition of “Jolene” with perhaps the most cinematic moment on the album — track 11, “Daughter,” is a scorching country ballad-turned-Italian opera that finds our protagonist setting the scene of smoke, bodies and, of course in true Beyoncé fashion, bloodstained custom couture.
Beyoncé’s duet with Miley Cyrus, “II Most Wanted,” finds the two stars going line for line, Miley’s rasp perfectly matching Beyoncé’s powerhouse vocals. Beyoncé and Cyrus’ harmonies flowing, they insist “I’ll be your shotgun rider, till the day I die.” The two superstars might be singing about their respective romantic partners, but it’s just as easy to believe they’re singing about each other. As they lyrically and sonically ride side by side, their chemistry is tangible and undeniable.
If “II Most Wanted” weren’t proof enough of Beyoncé’s undeniable talent for a cohesive duet, look no further than “Just for Fun,” which features country star Willie Jones. Another standout is “Levii’s Jeans” featuring Post Malone, who delivers some of the cleanest vocals of his career — setting the scene for a hot summer day in the South, where we find our superstar wearing a perfectly fitted pair of Levi’s.
It would be remiss to talk about Cowboy Carter without mentioning Beyoncé’s cover of The Beatles classic “Blackbird,” which she aptly restyled as “Blackbiird.” The cover features rising country star Tanner Adell. Once again, we find our superstar making an already-classic song her own entirely. It’s a pin-drop moment on the album — talking about it almost feels like I’m taking away from the time you could spend listening to it instead.
Beyoncé said, “This ain’t a country album, it’s a Beyoncé album.” And while Beyoncé has never been wrong, she has also never been so right. “Genres are a funny little concept,” Linda Martell (country star and trailblazer) states at the beginning of “Spaghettii” — almost laughing at every single Beyoncé detractor who questioned how the superstar would fit into the country genre. Country? Genre? This is Beyoncé. Just press play.
If you’ve scrolled through TikTok recently, you might have noticed that it sounds different than it did a few months ago.
Users have gotten creative with their sound choices. They’ve posted edits to a song from the children’s cartoon Little Einsteins, the Spongebob theme song, music from the quiz platform Kahoot, Kevin MacLeod’s royalty-free track “Sneaky Snitch” and the 20th Century Fox theme. There have been dances set to classical music, and the iPhone ringtone. Users have even posted screen recordings of what it’s like scrolling through their feeds, one with the text, “This is the funniest era of TikTok to ever exist.”
It’s all because Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok failed to reach a new licensing agreement after the previous one expired on Jan. 31. UMG issued an open letter on Jan. 30 citing concerns over AI, compensation, harassment and copyright infringement on the social media app. TikTok responded in a statement, saying, “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” Music credited to songwriters signed to Universal Music Publishing Group disappeared at the end of last month following a grace period.
TikTok has proved vital to artists, breaking new artists’ careers and causing songs to go viral, but the removal of UMG’s catalog has hit social media creators hard, too. Kenna Dean, 22, a dance creator with 1.7 million followers on the app, is one of many TikTokers who found out her videos with music by Universal artists – including one with 1.5 million likes – had been muted.
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“It was actually really disappointing, because it’s time you put into those videos,” Dean says. “You have comments on them, and you have other people who have done your dances out there. And then all of that is just gone, which was alarming.”
Dean had plans to film a dance collaboration with two other creators, @karaleighcannella and @jaedengomezz, on the same day the catalog was pulled. “All of the dance creators, we kind of woke up and were like, ‘What do we dance to?’” Dean says. They stumbled across Niana Guerrero’s viral dance (which now has over 14 million likes) to Kevin MacLeod’s “Fluffing a Duck” – a royalty-free track – as well as a dance to the Samsung alarm tone. “I just thought it was so funny,” says Dean, who jumped on both trends.
UMG is just one portion of the music industry. There are, of course, many artists who are not affiliated with Universal, or any label at all, and that music is still available for creators to use on TikTok – and a lot of users have opted to simply use the music at their disposal. Dean pointed out that she’s trying to use more songs by independent artists.
“I think it is a chance that we can prove that we are also worth listening to,” says independent artist and creator Charisse Chua. “Us not being signed doesn’t stop us from still creating good music and releasing it out there.” Earlier this month, Chua, 19, posted a clip of her song “would you take it all back?” with the caption, “umg songs might be gone [from] tiktok but mine aren’t!!”
But it’s still a challenge to get music to reach more viewers. “I expected there to be a lot more interaction than there was,” Chua says, adding that there are a lot of artists trying to use the app to boost their music.
Many TikTokers have also turned to covers as a way to replace the missing songs. In one video, creators danced to a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” from the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Another user made a video featuring medieval-style instrumental versions of songs that got 1.9 million likes, with the audio being used in over 700 videos.
Glee covers are also popular, with a clip of the Glee Cast version of “Rose’s Turn,” uploaded by @girlyteengirl123, currently trending on the app, having been used in over 300,000 videos and reaching No. 3 in Billboard’s TikTok Top 50 chart. A remix of Ice Spice’s “Think U The Shit (Fart)” in the style of the Nintendo character Toad was uploaded to TikTok on Jan. 26 – just days before the licensing agreement expired – and has since gotten 2 million likes, having been used in close to 9,000 videos, often as a joking substitute for the original song. And some users took matters into their own hands, recording covers themselves.
“I just thought, ‘Well, I’m a singer. I might as well just do my own acapella version,’” Vicky Ntamag, 25, a musician and dancer, says. She began uploading her covers to TikTok after the dispute, starting with a cover of Nicki Minaj’s “FTCU” and responding to a few requests in her comments. Her cover of ATEEZ’s “Crazy Form” was used over 200 times and her acapella version of RIIZE’s “Talk Saxy” was used in upwards of 2,770 videos. RIIZE even posted a video dancing to Ntamag’s cover that now has a million likes.
At the time Ntamag posted the cover, the original song was still available on TikTok (RIIZE is signed to RCA which is under Sony Music Entertainment) but it has since been taken down as the song falls under Universal Publishing. RIIZE posted a video using Ntamag’s cover with the text “don’t worry everyone… we still have this sound!”
Some of these covers are gaining real traction – and attention from bigger artists. Mikael Arellano’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “Bejeweled” got 1.5 million likes, with OneRepublic commenting, “Can you help us too..” Arellano then posted a video singing the band’s “Counting Stars,” and OneRepublic used the audio in two videos uploaded to its account. Conan Gray, who recently told Rolling Stone, “I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting acapella covers happening from UMG artists until this is settled,” sang over a clip of his own music video.
“The TikTok community is really strong,” Ntamag says. “And we help each other with the songs. That’s why I’m taking the requests, because some of them want to use them for their edits, or there’s certain songs that were taken off that I’m going to make an acapella [version] for, just to help my fellow TikTokers.”
The communal aspect drives TikTok. Building upon a previous joke is how memes function and audio sharing is integral to that. Participating in and even viewing trends forms the shared experience of being on TikTok, and certain sounds define eras of the app – even if those sounds happen to be TV show themes and ringtones to capture the beginning of February. Soon after the dispute, TikTok seemed to shift away from some of the more creative options towards just using the music that was still available on the app, although covers and royalty-free tracks remain popular.
“We were all a little bummed when we saw that the music was taken off,” says Ntamag. “But I feel like it’s also an opportunity that we can use to share who we are and how funny we are and what kind of music we make and how creative we can be.”
As the showdown continues between Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok after the world’s biggest record company pulled content by its artists and songwriters from the video-hosting social media site, it seems as though the ban has created a window of opportunity for independent music acts.
A look at the upper echelon of Billboard‘s TikTok Top 50 chart shows that most of the top 20 entries on the chart are independent recordings, including Dasha’s breakthrough “Austin,” Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine,” Djo (a.k.a. actor/musician Joe Keery)’s “End of Beginning,” and even Bobby Caldwell’s 1979 song “What You Won’t Do For Love.” Prior to UMG’s TikTok ban, independent artists, music from independent artists already made up a significant portion of the TikTok 50 chart, which debuted in September 2023, but without UMG artists’ or songwriters’ works on the platform — which by Billboard‘s recent estimates affects more than 60% of the most popular songs in the United States — the pathway to success seems more clear than ever.
However, top independent music executives have a message for artists in the sector: “Not so fast.”
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As UMG’s ban drags on, independent music executives are advising artists to look at the bigger picture — and also to use this as an opportunity to look at what rights they do and don’t control.
“I truly hope we don’t do what we so often do in the music industry, which is say, ‘Oh, this is an opportunity for me to get a bit of an advantage,’ and then take the advantage, but ultimately damage the ecosystem,” says Richard James Burgess, president/CEO of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM). “I think we are sort of at a critically bad state, in terms of the amount of money that’s being paid through [to artists]. That works out fine if you’re an aggregator, distributor or label, and you’ve got enough copyrights. But it’s extremely difficult for the artist to generate enough copyrights to make a living from if someone’s not a household name.”
Burgess continues, “TikTok is an extremely bad actor in terms of the types of deals they do and the structure of their deals. It’s almost like trying to play the lottery — if you get a viral TikTok, it can have an impact on your sales, but how much money does TikTok make from us trying to get that sort of viral spike? They should be paying for the use of music and they’re effectively not paying. I think Universal did a great thing here, and my membership, my board, supports that position.” (A rep for TikTok has declined to comment for this story).
In a 2022 Billboard story, one executive from an independent label noted that artists on his roster earned approximately $150 from TikTok from around 100,000 videos that were made with their music. Meanwhile, in the same report, a marketer who spearheaded a campaign for a music single that was used in approximately half a million TikTok videos noted that his artist earned less than $5,000 from TikTok, though views rose into the billions.
While there are opportunities for increasing numbers of independent artists to gain greater traction on TikTok during the platform’s impasse with UMG, “it’s important for artists to use the opportunity to focus on their own art instead of chasing trending sounds or being the one-millionth person to cover a hit song,” says Jody Whelan of independent record label Oh Boy Records, which was founded in 1981 by the late singer-songwriter John Prine and which now represents music from Prine, Kelsey Waldon and Arlo McKinley, among others. “If you’re lucky enough to go viral on TikTok, you want folks to stick around to hear what you have to say.”
For many contemporary acts, TikTok is a key component of their marketing plans, with labels and managers urging artists to create content in hopes of driving listeners to streaming platforms. A 2023 report, commissioned by TikTok and facilitated by Luminate, noted that 62% of U.S. TikTok users pay for a music streaming service, compared to 43% of all consumers.“TikTok user engagement metrics are strongly associated with streaming volumes,” in the United States, the report stated. “In other words, higher TikTok engagement — whether that’s likes, views or shares — corresponds with elevated streaming volumes.” The report also noted that TikTok users are more engaged with other areas of music-related consumption, claiming that in the United States, 45% of TikTok users purchased music-related merch over a year-long span, compared with 35% of overall music listeners, while 38% of TikTok users attended a live music event during the year, compared to 33% of overall music listeners.
Even with stats like these, Whelan says the TikTok/UMG battle should serve as a cautionary tale to realize how even so-called independent artists can get caught in the ban’s web because of an affiliation with UMG or UMPG. “This should also serve as a reminder to the independent community: You can’t rely on someone else’s platform to reach your audience,” Whelan says. “This month it’s UMG, next month it could be your distributor. The algorithms and priorities of social media companies and the streamers continuously shift. You have to be able to control the means in which you communicate directly with your audience, whether that’s by email or by text (we also still send out postcards to our fans!).”
Stem CEO Milana Lewis agrees, seeing the situation as a “great moment to highlight the difference between independence and autonomy. Artists believe they’re independent when they do a deal with the independent distribution arm of a major label because their deal terms might be more flexible. In reality, they still have very little control over their rights, and this is a great example of how a big corporation is deciding on their behalf whether or not their music is available on a platform and whether or not they are willing to trade off earnings for exposure.”
Independent artists should be taking this time to examine their relationships with all social media and make sure they are taking full advantage of each platform despite TikTok’s current dominance, says Seth Faber, Stem’s general manager of music distribution and payments. “Time will tell if Universal’s maneuver will lead to a meaningful redistribution of the viral pie. In the meantime, artists should continue to lean into the full landscape of snackable content,” Faber says. “The power of Instagram’s Reels, Spotify’s Clips and YouTube’s Shorts aren’t to be ignored. Diversify those content portfolios.”
For Burgess, UMG vs. TikTok is a repeat of an age-old battle pitting the industry against artists, with artists often coming out on the short end of the stick. “[TikTok] plays this promotional exposure-discovery game. How many times do we get sucked into that?” Burgess asks. “Radio hasn’t paid [artists] for recorded music. MTV didn’t pay. We keep making the same mistakes. Good thing is that Universal is big enough, and especially with the publishing and everything, the tendrils from that go far and wide.”
Burgess further likens the UMG-TikTok battle with the ongoing battle with secondary ticket markets, saying that most of the money is not making its way to artists. “That is the essence of the problem,” he says. “It would be good if people did the right thing here and stood together to get a better deal for everybody.”