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Just days after the Universal Music Group‘s publishing catalog began coming down from TikTok, Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) released a new statement stressing its concerns about artificial intelligence and online safety on the short-form video app. The company stated these are “equally” important issues to TikTok lack of “fair compensation” to songwriters.
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UMPG also acknowledged in its new statement that “the disruption is difficult for some of [its songwriters]” but says leaving the TikTok app is “critical for the sustained future value, safety and health of the entire music ecosystem.”
At the end of January, UMG announced in a letter to its artists and songwriters that it would be allowing its license with TikTok to expire, saying that TikTok refused to pay the “fair value” of music and no deal could be reached. (Tiktok fired back with its own statement, hours later, saying UMG’s decision was motivated by “greed”.) Within days, UMG tracks were removed from Tiktok en masse, including the catalogs of superstars Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Drake, BTS and more who are signed to UMG record labels. In the letter, the company noted that these takedowns would also include its publishing arm, UMPG, but the publishing-related removals did not begin until Tuesday, Feb. 26.
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Now, any song, even if it was released by a non-UMG record label, is subject to takedown on TikTok if even one UMPG-signed songwriter was involved in its creation. Because UMPG is the second largest publisher in the world, these publishing takedowns were wide reaching, impacting almost every record label in one way or another.
In response to the publishing takedowns, TikTok said in a statement on Wednesday, “[UMG’s] actions not only affect the songwriters and artists that they represent, but now also impact many artists and songwriters not signed to Universal. We remain committed to reaching an equitable agreement with Universal Music Group.”
Read UMPG’s new statement to its songwriters below in full:
TikTok is removing UMPG songs because there is no license in place. As you may have heard, to-date, they have not agreed to recognize the fair value of your songs, which so many other digital partners around the world have done.
As we previously addressed in our open letter, in addition to fair compensation for your songs, the negotiations have also focused on two other critical and equally important issues: protecting you, human artists and songwriters, from the harmful effects of AI; and online safety for TikTok’s users, including your fans which include young children.
TikTok’s intentions with respect to AI are increasingly apparent. While refusing to respond to our concerns about AI depriving songwriters from fair compensation, or provide assurances that they will not train their AI models on your songs, recent media reports reveal “TikTok and ByteDance leaders have long wanted to move the app beyond music.” Reflecting on our open letter, other commentators have noted where this distancing from the music industry could lead, fueled by AI: “TikTok has an incentive to push the use of these AI recordings rather than the copyrighted and licensed recordings.”
Every indication is that they simply do not value your music.
We understand the disruption is difficult for some of you and your careers, and we are sensitive to how this may affect you around the world. We recognize that this might be uncomfortable at the moment. But it is critical for the sustained future value, safety and health of the entire music ecosystem, including all music fans.
As always, UMPG will only support partners that value songwriters, artists and your songs. We have a long history of successfully fighting for our songwriters and will continue to do so. You should expect nothing less from us.
For as long as there’s been a “music business,” creators have been fighting for their fair share, and modern history is replete with examples of corporations trying to shortchange music makers.
Case-in-point: AM/FM radio, where U.S. broadcasters have been getting away with paying artists $0 from their $15 billion-a-year revenue – despite the fact that music is their main input. Their argument? Because radio is supplying “free promotion” for the musicians, they don’t deserve a cut of the profits. Big broadcasters have been pushing this excuse since the 1930s.
Fast forward almost a century, and we’re now seeing this play out with new technology – most recently with the dispute betweenTikTok and Universal Music Group (UMG). Using the same argument as radio broadcasters, TikTok claims its platform provides “free promotion” to artists, and it’s therefore trying to undercut what they pay for the use of their music. But UMG refused to fall for this ploy and has now pulled all of its content from the platform until TikTok agrees to an appropriate licensing fee. As a result, about one-third of the most popular recordings on TikTok, including music from Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Billie Eilish, are now unavailable on the platform. (And this trend may grow if the dispute expands to the publishing side of the business, with indie publishers’ TikTok license due to expire in April.)
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UMG is doing the right thing by standing up for its artists. The label is making the case that creators should be paid fairly for the use of their tracks, in line with other platforms. (It also seeks to protect artists from the harmful effects of unregulated AI and encourages online safety protocols for users, two things all of us should support.) UMG recognizes that the lure of potentially viral promotion is in no way a substitute for fair compensation to hard-working creators.
Long before social media, companies using others’ musical property have sought to avoid paying fairly for that privilege because of this outdated argument around “promotion.” They tried it in the case of piano rolls, silent movie theaters, retail stores, music venues and even peer-to-peer file sharing platforms like Napster and Grokster. In each of those instances, companies tried to underpay (or not pay at all) for the music on the bogus theory that creators should “just accept the promotion, be thankful for whatever they get, and be on their merry way” – regardless of the immense profits they were making from the use of that music.
Thankfully, in the above cases, players in the music industry stood firm and refused to be blinded by the siren song of promotion. But that clearly hasn’t stopped others from trying the same trick.
TikTok is abusing its reputation as the place where new music is discovered. It’s true that many of today’s popular artists (like Lil Nas X, Doja Cat and Lizzo) first found fame on the platform. It’s also where catalog music is finding new life. There is no disputing the important role TikTok plays in the current music ecosystem. But that is an altogether different question than whether or not TikTok should compensate artists fairly.
Instead of using its power to pay artists less, TikTok should take the opposite approach. It should seek to be the digital home for musicians, the place not just where they can be heard, but where they want to be heard and where their value is recognized. This holds true for superstars, middle-class musicians and up-and-comers praying for their first breakout hit. And it starts with paying all of them fairly in recognition of the critical role they provide to the business, whether they’re receiving “promotion” or not.
Going forward, it’s important that key players, like UMG, take a stand against inequity on every platform that seeks to take advantage of creators.*
*SoundExchange is not involved in collecting sound recording royalties from TikTok.
Michael Huppe is president and CEO of SoundExchange.
Cat Janice, a singer-songwriter whose “Dance You Outta My Head” went viral on TikTok earlier this year, died on Wednesday (Feb. 28). She was 31 years old.
Janice’s brother posted the news to her Instagram page, writing in the caption, “This morning, from her childhood home and surrounded by her loving family, Catherine peacefully entered the light and love of her heavenly creator.”
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The statement continued, “We are eternally thankful for the outpouring of love that Catherine and our family have received over the past few months. Cat saw her music go places she never expected and rests in the peace of knowing that she will continue to provide for her son through her music. This would not have been possible without all of you.”
According to the statement, new music will be released posthumously. “Per Cat’s request, there is some more art that she wants to share too. All in due time,” the statement concludes.
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Janice was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare cancer that develops in the bones and soft tissues, after noticing a lump in her neck, as she explained on TikTok. She underwent surgery, chemo and radiation before being declared cancer-free on July 22, 2022.
Earlier this year, Janice shared with her followers that the cancer had returned, and she entered hospice. The singer then transferred all of her songs to her seven-year-old son Loren, so that all proceeds from the tracks would go to him.
In a devastating TikTok shared on Jan. 6, she revealed that the cancer had “won” and that she’d be releasing one more song, “Dance Outta My Head,” for her birthday that month. “I want my last song to bring joy and fun! It’s all I’ve ever wanted through my battle with cancer.”
“Please please share this, I need to leave this with [Loren]. If there is anything you need to know, is that the only opinion of yourself is your opinion. Love yourself and be gentle with others. I hope to make it through this but if not, to all a good night,” she captioned the post.
Since then, “Dance Outta My Head” topped the TikTok Billboard Top 50 dated Feb. 17. “Dance You Outta My Head” concurrently reached the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart for the first time, lifting 11-10. It earned 5,000 downloads Feb. 2-8, good enough for its first week at No. 1 on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales list, and 1.2 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge addressed the company’s ongoing licensing dispute with TikTok in its latest earnings call on Wednesday (Feb. 28), saying: “there must not be free rides for massive global platforms such as TikTok that refuse to meaningfully address issues around AI platform safety or pay their fair share for our artists’ and songwriters’ work.”
Boyd Muir, UMG’s CFO and executive vp, also revealed during the earnings call that UMG would “focus on accelerating [its] partnerships” with Meta, Snap, YouTube and more competing social platforms and that it would make more announcements about this “in the coming weeks.”
At the end of January, UMG, the world’s largest music company, opted to let its licensing agreement with TikTok expire, citing that the short-form video app refused to pay the “fair value” for music. It also cited other concerns around artificial intelligence. “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay,” UMG wrote in a letter to its artists. Within hours, TikTok fired back at UMG in reply, saying that the major music company “has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
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Since then, the companies’ negotiations have been seemingly stuck at a standstill and millions of UMG-controlled recordings have been removed from the platform. Starting Tuesday (Feb. 27), the takedowns went even further, including the removal of any recording that features one or more Universal Music Publishing Group-signed songwriters for the first time. This impacts such major recording artists as Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Bad Bunny, even though they don’t record for UMG.
In response to the publishing takedowns, TikTok said in a statement on Wednesday, “[UMG’s] actions not only affect the songwriters and artists that they represent, but now also impact many artists and songwriters not signed to Universal. We remain committed to reaching an equitable agreement with Universal Music Group.”
UMG’s earnings call on Wednesday focused largely on TikTok during the the question and answer portion, as well as other core development for the company like its new deal with Chord Music Partners.
While UMG has previously said TikTok only makes up about 1% of the company’s total revenue, chief digital officer and executive vp Michael Nash said he believes that’s not necessarily all a loss amid the negotiation standoff. “In general, if consumption shifts from TikTok to other short video platforms like Reels or YouTube Shorts, we believe we can, in fact, recapture some lost revenue,” he said during the call. “Keep in mind, over half of TikTok monthly active users already also use other short video services. In some markets, that percentage is as high as 70%. These are services that monetize engagement at a much higher rate, so revenue positive consumer migration is easily foreseeable.”
Nash also said that UMG has been “providing notices to effectuate the muting of million of videos every day for the last two weeks” on TikTok to aid in the takedown process, which started earlier this month. “And that’s the recorded music content. Keep in mind that our publishing copyrights are just now starting to be enforced on the platform.” He noted that the company has seen “no discernible negative impact” on its “broader digital business’ by leaving TikTok to date but added that “that’s qualified by the fact that we’re very early on in the process… In fact, we’ve seen a slight uptick in terms of frontline consumption and catalog consumption over this short period of time.”
In response to one question about TikTok, Grainge responded, “I’m also not prepared to compromise the future of social category by doing something that completely undermines the economics for us and for everybody else.” One of UMG’s key concerns among the licensing discussions has been that if it were to accept a diminished royalty from TikTok, then other social media platforms could request the same.
But Grainge vowed that UMG likes “to be friendly.” He said, “We are friendly. My phone is open, unfortunately, 24 hours a day. We hope that we can find a solution… we like win-win situations. We’ve laid out what’s important to us, and I believe important to our industry.”
When an investor asked if this remark indicated that UMG was waiting for TikTok to call them and reengage on a deal structure [UMG has] previously presented,” Nash said “we’re not going to comment on the status of discussions with TikTok for obvious reasons.”
At the end of the call, Grainge downplayed TikTok’s impact on music marketing: “I mean, let’s put this into perspective,” he said. “Apple, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, all the social categories, the fitness categories, digital radio, Sirius, Pandora, iHeart… [TikTok is] one, it’s not a material part of the multidisciplinary jigsaw, where we promote and market our music globally”
When Uber Eats used mazie‘s “Dumb Dumb” in a commercial that played during the last Super Bowl, she ordinarily would have used the sought-after synch to promote the 2021 song relentlessly to her 375,000 TikTok followers. But her label, Goodbye Records, is distributed through Universal’s Virgin Music Group, which pulled its music from the social media platform at the beginning of February after negotiations for a new licensing deal fell apart. “It’s insane,” mazie says. “My song was just in a Super Bowl commercial, and I have to repromote it [by] using other people’s ripped versions of my song on the platform.”
The singer-songwriter, whose track went viral last year and says it “changed my life in every single way,” is one of many frustrated developing artists signed to or distributed by the world’s largest music company. They all have similar complaints: Their label contacts have spent years instructing them to focus the bulk of their marketing efforts on TikTok and its 1 billion-plus monthly active users. With their music no longer on the platform, they are scrambling for alternate ways to be heard.
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“A lot of us are left at the drawing board again, especially when we’ve gotten an artist over the anxiety of putting themselves out there on TikTok,” says Sabrina Finkelstein, manager of Los Angeles singer Kristiane. “Now that that’s gone, it brings you almost to square one.”
Kristiane is signed to Fader, a label distributed by UMG’s Virgin Music Group, so she’s building buzz for her upcoming Stray Dog EP by deemphasizing TikTok and talking to fans on Instagram Broadcast Channels and other platforms. “We’re putting up lost-dog posters all over New York and other cities,” says Finkelstein, who is also A&R director for the Sony Music-owned RECORDS label. “Small things you can do to bring it off TikTok and into the real world.”
Springfield, Mo., folk-country band Pawns or Kings can no longer post its 2022 track “Anymore” on TikTok, because Universal bought its distributor, Ingrooves, and merged it with Virgin Music Group — even after singer Edward Stengel spent $7,000 of his own money on a video. “That song was always our spearhead song,” says Stengel, who is still promoting the track on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram while posting older material released through independent label ONErpm on TikTok. But Pawns or Kings’ early music is darker than its current work, Stengel says, which makes the stopgap strategy “an abrupt pivot” for the band’s image.
Canadian rapper bbno$ says his 2021 track “Edamame,” which has nearly 426 million Spotify plays, was “having a moment” on TikTok when the UMG ban took effect. The artist had licensed the song to mTheory’s distribution division for a five-year period — the same mTheory that UMG acquired in 2022 (putting its top executives in charge of Virgin). “I’m actually fully independent. It was just this one deal that looped all the songs together, and I got fucked,” says bbno$, who is considering altering the song with pitch-correction and wild sound effects — such as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants repeating, “I’m ready!” — to avoid detection from digital sweeps.
L.A. rock band Dead Posey, which released its single “Zombies” just days before the ban, sped up its songs on TikTok by 5% — an effective solution, although artists can’t link unofficial songs to official Spotify streams. “It has not been taken down,” says singer Danyell Souza, whose label, Position Music, has a Virgin distribution deal. Adds guitarist Tony Fagenson: “We’re hopeful this resolves soon in a favorable way to artists. In the meantime, we have to play some tricks to keep using this platform.”
UMG-signed and -distributed artists are also turning to their most potent asset on TikTok: fans. One of Kristiane’s followers recently posted a lip-sync video to a concert track, declaring, “At least UMG can’t take away my live audios.” Finkelstein is supportive of this approach. “No matter what, the fans are going to find a way to share their artists’ music and support them,” she says. “There are ways around it.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Beyoncé‘s “Cuff It” vanished from TikTok on Tuesday (Feb. 27), the latest casualty of the platform’s stand-off with Universal Music Group (UMG).
“Cuff It” is not alone. Harry Styles‘ recordings are no longer available, SZA‘s recordings are gone, except for her new single “Saturn,” and most of Bad Bunny’s music is missing as well — even though none of these artists are signed to UMG labels.
When negotiations between UMG and TikTok fell apart at the end of January, official recordings made by UMG artists like Taylor Swift and Drake swiftly disappeared from the platform. After a grace period, songs that were penned in part by UMPG’s songwriters are now suffering the same fate.
“Cuff It” is one of many Beyoncé songs that features a contribution from a songwriter signed to Universal Music Publishing Group — in this case, Raphael Saadiq. UMPG’s roster also includes artists Styles, Rosalía, SZA, Bad Bunny and Steve Lacy for their songwriting credits. In the U.S., UMPG touches 20% to 30% of the music on TikTok, according to a rep for the platform. The rep declined to comment further.
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UMPG also declined to comment for this story. In a letter to songwriters earlier this month, the publisher said, “TikTok insists on paying our songwriters at a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social media platforms pay — and without any material increase from our prior agreement… This is unacceptable.”
Tension between the music industry and TikTok has been growing for years. Many executives still believe it is the most effective platform for marketing music, even if it is maddeningly hard to influence.
At the same time, many around the music industry argue that TikTok does not pay enough to use the music that helped it become such a wildly popular app. (The music-tech company Pex found that 85% of TikTok videos incorporate music.) Late in 2022, UMG CEO Lucian Grainge noted that a value gap was “forming fast in the new iterations of short-form video.”
In a statement to Billboard at that time, TikTok global head of music Ole Obermann emphasized that the platform was not a music streaming service: “Our community comes to TikTok to watch videos, not to listen to full-length tracks.” He added, “We’re proud of the partnerships we are building with the industry and artists, and we are confident that we are enhancing musical engagement. That translates directly to more financial and creative opportunities for music creators.”
The simmering tension boiled over in late January. In an open letter, UMG announced that its negotiations with TikTok had fallen apart. “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay,” UMG wrote. The record company accused TikTok of trying to “intimidate us into conceding to a bad deal that undervalues music and shortchanges artists and songwriters as well as their fans.”
TikTok responded by saying that UMG was pushing a “false narrative.” It’s “sad and disappointing, that [UMG] has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters,” TikTok continued.
On Feb. 15, a snippet of Post Malone singing along to a forthcoming collaboration with Luke Combs surfaced on TikTok. Post Malone is signed to Mercury/Republic Records, Universal Music Group labels, and UMG’s catalog has been unavailable on TikTok since the start of February. This means that preexisting videos made with his hits now play without sound, and users can’t make new clips with his recordings. The video of Post Malone lip-syncing to the track was originally posted on Instagram Reels, but it migrated to TikTok anyway — most clips do — and the audio remained unmuted, skirting the UMG ban because the song has not been officially released.
“We can still use the platform to tease new music because until the master hits TikTok, nothing will happen” to it, says Tim Gerst, CEO of Nashville-based digital marketing agency Thinkswell. “We’re not really going to change our strategy much.”
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Artists silenced by the UMG-TikTok impasse have used this and other workarounds during the first month that they’ve been walled off from what is arguably their most effective marketing tool. Indeed, digital marketers say they haven’t noticed an exodus from the platform after the negotiations between the two companies fell apart.
“Artists impacted by this are just being more creative on TikTok about how they’re getting music out,” Shopkeeper Management digital marketing manager Laura Spinelli says. “People are doing acoustic versions of songs; they’re changing up the tempo [so that songs don’t trigger TikTok’s sonic fingerprinting system]; they’re talking around it.
“It’s not, ‘TikTok’s gone, so I’m going to go on [YouTube] Shorts,’ ” Spinelli continues. “It’s, ‘The masters are gone from TikTok; how can I still get my music out?’ ”
While there are plenty of digital platforms that artists can use to market their music, the reality is none have been able to consistently replicate TikTok’s impact over the past four years. “There’s really no other comparable digital marketing strategy or platform for exposure of new music,” says Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of Black 17, The Orchard’s top label on TikTok. “Trends are tied to songs on TikTok in a unique way. On Reels and Shorts, the audience cares less about the song, more about the video content.”
“TikTok is No. 1 for music discovery,” adds Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of digital marketing company Songfluencer. “These other platforms don’t lead to consumption the same way TikTok does.”
It’s also not clear that Reels and Shorts are even trying to challenge TikTok in the way they once did. When the two platforms were launched in 2020, they both seemed positioned to compete for TikTok’s market share — the app had recently been banned in India, and President Donald Trump was threatening to do the same in the United States.
In the years since, however, “both of these products, which came out as TikTok competitors, have evolved,” says another digital marketer who has worked with artists and brands. “They’re different from what they were, and the focus of the companies behind them have shifted.”
The digital marketer points to a recent blog post in which YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that “YouTube’s next frontier is the living room,” suggesting the platform was increasingly interested in competing with a company like Netflix rather than other purveyors of short-form video. “It might not be what you’d expect,” Mohan wrote, “but people like watching Shorts on their TVs.”
Reels and its parent company, Meta, have also made significant changes over the last 12 months. In 2023, the company shut down the bonus system it had put in place to financially incentivize creator activity. (That program seemed like another attempt to compete with TikTok, which had announced its own $200 million creator fund in 2020.) A couple of months later, Meta launched another platform, Threads. Just as Reels once seemed aimed at capitalizing on the misfortunes of TikTok, the timing of Threads’ arrival seemed an attempt to capitalize on the troubles of Elon Musk’s X; Meta’s new platform also appeared to signal a shift in company priorities.
Even so, most artists have been, at a minimum, cross-posting TikTok clips to Shorts and Reels for several years, eager to find exposure wherever they can get it.
Shorts has helped artists grow their subscriber numbers on YouTube, and subscribers can be monetized in other ways. Harrison Golding, who oversees digital marketing for EMPIRE, has seen it function as “a discovery tool in countries where YouTube is their primary streaming platform,” like India.
Reels is still an engine for increasing followers as well. “If you want to grow on Instagram right now, Reels is the way to do that,” Spinelli says. In addition, manager Tommy Kiljoy says Reels helped drive listeners to his client ThxSoMch’s latest release, “Hide Your Kids,” as well as Sawyer Hill’s “Look at the Time,” which recently topped Spotify’s Viral 50 chart in the United States.
But “we see more trends on TikTok,” says Hemish Gholkar, a digital marketer who works with all of the major labels. “We hardly see trends to a record on Reels or Shorts.”
While UMG’s catalog remains officially unavailable on TikTok, it has always been the case that any user can upload audio to the platform. Many viral trends start thanks to unofficial bootlegs, and “some artists are just putting up songs as original sounds,” according to Nima Nasseri, a former vp of A&R strategy for Universal Music Group.
Artists “are speeding up their songs a little bit, doing different edits,” and posting them on TikTok, Kiljoy notes. “I’ve seen people lean into [the absence of the music] more than anything and get a rise out of it.” (UMG artists’ music may also be still available if they collaborated with an act on another label: TikTokers can find Drake rapping on Travis Scott’s “Meltdown,” for example.)
In addition, artists have devised ways to keep seeding their music without the official recording. Singer d4vd, whose breakout hits got traction on TikTok and led to a record deal with UMG’s Darkroom/Interscope Records, recently posted a video labeled “d4vd songs that sound better live,” which shows him performing “Leave Her,” his latest release.
Gerst has had success promoting his clients’ older music in cases when it was recorded outside of the UMG system. “We’re going back and pushing a bunch of the back-catalog content,” Gerst says. A video his team posted soundtracked by “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” Brad Paisley’s goofy tribute to fishing, amassed over 30 million views across TikTok and Reels. The song was originally released through Sony in 2001, but a throwback that’s earning millions of views still keeps Paisley top of mind for fans as he moves towards a new album.
Even UMG artists who have expressed disappointment that their music isn’t available on TikTok keep posting anyway. “Two massive companies deciding what goes on with people’s art; it’s a bit f—ing daft,” artist Yungblud said in a TikTok video after the negotiations crumbled. “Everything can be taken away at the touch of a button.”
Still, he continues to post every few days, uploading a mix of onstage and backstage videos, an acoustic performance of “When We Die (Can We Still Get High?)” and interview footage. The same goes for Muni Long, who posted an interview to TikTok in which she called her music’s absence from the platform “a bummer,” and another clip of a group of fans screaming along to her single “Made For Me” at a basketball game.
The stand-off between UMG and TikTok is about to enter a new phase where any songs that have contributions from Universal Music Publishing Group songwriters disappear from the platform, meaning artists and marketers will have to adjust once again. “We’re not going to abandon TikTok,” Gerst says. “We’re just going to find new ways to do it.”
If you don’t live under a rock, you are likely aware that Beyoncé released a pair of new songs earlier this month. One of them, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” has blanketed TikTok in recent days: Around 74,000 users had made videos incorporating the sound on February 18; this more-than-tripled over the course of a week, pushing the total number of clips using the track past 224,000 on February 25. “Texas Hold ‘Em” climbed from No. 2 to No. 1 on the latest Hot 100.
TikTok’s ability to help drive this kind of ubiquity has diminished in recent years — much to the chagrin of the music industry. “In 2019, you could catch a trend and go top five on Apple Music in like a day,” says Harrison Golding, vice president of strategic marketing at EMPIRE. “Now the platform is so mature that even if you get trends and user-generated content, the numbers may not correlate to streams.”
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And yet: “The virality of this Beyoncé record shows you the power of the platform,” says Nima Nasseri, a former vp of A&R strategy for Universal Music Group, where he worked on a team that ran TikTok campaigns for resurgent catalog hits like Trinidad Cardona’s “Dinero” and Phantogram’s “Black Out Days.” “It’s still there. You can’t discount it.” (Not that anyone was discounting it — more like lamenting the good old days when outcomes on TikTok were far easier to influence.)
The TikTok takeover of “Texas Hold ‘Em” carries extra weight because it feels like a potent reminder of the platform’s impact at a time when the music industry is eager to look for alternatives. Licensing negotiations between Universal Music Group and TikTok fell apart in January, which means that no official sounds from UMG artists have been available on the platform during February. And whenever TikTok faces a potential obstacle — U.S. politicians threaten to ban it, for example, or a massive song catalog is removed — music industry attention turns to Instagram and YouTube, which also have their own short-form video delivery systems (Reels and Shorts, respectively).
It’s possible that more music will come down from TikTok at the end of February — not just tracks by UMG’s artists, but also any songs that include contributions from Universal Music Publishing Group’s songwriters. It makes sense, then, that “artists and their teams are putting more strategy into all three platforms now,” according to Jen Darmafall, director of marketing for ATG Group. “Before, they would just make content that works for TikTok and then post it on the other platforms.”
Although recent history is littered with songs that exploded on TikTok and saw a correlated jump on streaming services, it’s always been much harder to find comparable examples associated with Reels and Shorts. “Reels is more self-contained,” Nasseri explains. “You can get 100,000 uses of a sound on Reels, and that won’t impact” plays on streaming services.
Historically, success on Reels creates “more of a passive following,” adds Ben Locke, director of A&R and marketing at the label Disharmony.
When it comes to Shorts, Golding includes it in all his rollouts, as do most music marketers. “Is it changing a record like TikTok can?” he asks. “No, not yet.”
Nasseri agrees: “You don’t see creates grow at the same rate on YouTube Shorts as they do on TikTok.” (Neal Mohan, YouTube’s CEO, recently wrote on the company’s blog that “Shorts is averaging over 70 billion daily views, and the number of channels uploading Shorts has grown 50% year over year.”)
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This all makes the recent success of Sawyer Hill’s “Look at the Time” that much more noteworthy: The song topped Spotify’s Viral 50 chart in the U.S. last week thanks in large part to listeners coming from Reels. “I’ve never seen virality from Reels like this that drove consumption in a meaningful way,” says Locke, who signed Sawyer Hill to Disharmony.
Locke actually found Sawyer Hill on TikTok (of course) late in 2022; “Look at the Time,” a parched power ballad riddled with reproachful guitar riffs, came out in June 2023. In the past few months, Locke says, Sawyer Hill “pivoted his strategy more to Reels, because he felt like there was less of an over-saturation of music on that platform.”
And recently, Locke continues, “his content is starting to get a ton of engagement.” The top comment on Sawyer Hill’s “Look at the Time” YouTube video is “Instagram brought me here, I’m glad the algorithm showed me this gem.” The second comment is more amusing — and more revealing: “Usually the songs that are advertised on insta SUCK but this is actually gorgeous.”
Tommy Kiljoy, who manages ThxSoMch, calls the success of “Look at the Time” “a major win for Instagram.” The platform “is still a little bit weird — you get more followers than engagement,” he says. But ThxSoMch’s latest single “Hide Your Kids” also recently enjoyed a boost from Reels. (Sawyer Hill and ThxSoMch are not signed to UMG labels, so their music is currently available on TikTok as well.)
It’s too early to know if this activity on Reels is an aberration or the start of a trend. On Friday, “Look at the Time” enjoyed its fifth day at No. 1 on Spotify’s U.S. Viral 50. Sitting nearby at No. 3 was Djo’s “End of Beginning.” Unlike Sawyer Hill, though, Djo’s success can be attributed directly to TikTok users, who have embraced the 2022 song in droves.
This just goes to show, “in the digital space, no one has the formula right now,” as Golding puts it. “We’re constantly trying to figure out what type of campaign is going to actually convert a new fan. It’s a few drops in a bucket here, a few drops there, and hope you catch a viral moment.”
Paul Hourican announced on Thursday (Feb. 22) that he was leaving TikTok, where he served as global head of music operations. “After four and a half amazing years and with a lifetime’s worth of memories and achievements in the bag, I have made the decision to move on from TikTok,” Hourican wrote on LinkedIn. He […]
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Source: TikTok / TikTok
An Atlanta woman’s TikTok series shedding light on her toxic relationship with her ex-husband has gone viral after captivating social media users across all platforms.
The 50-part series shared by TikTok user, ReesaTeesa, titled “Who TF Did I Marry” is an extensive recount of her experience with a man she met online and married during the pandemic.
“I’m going to tell the story of how I met, dated, married, and divorced a real pathological liar,” she said in the introductory video, sharing that she’s “going to be truthful, even if it makes me look bad.”
The story begins with Teesa meeting the man she nicknamed “Legion” on March 4, 2020, through Facebook Dating. She was unaware they had also matched on Hinge until he told her about it. After exchanging numbers, the pair had their first telephone conversation, where “Legion” shared information about his childhood, family, and friends and what he did for a living.
Legion told her that he was a wealthy former arena football player who had a job at Apple during his off-season, sharing that he recenlty relocated to Atlanta from California to work as the VP of a condiment company. While getting to know one another, they shared intimate details about their lives, with Legion revealing that he had recently divorced his first wife due to her infidelity. Legion and Reesa discussed what they were looking for in a relationship and continued dating; she was falling for him.
Shortly after they started dating, COVID-19 shut down the world, which intensified their romance. Legion and Reesa began living together, and while it was against her Christian values to cohabitate with a man before marriage, she didn’t want to be alone. He was also taking care of her by paying her bills. Their relationship continued to escalate, and soon, they were discussing buying a home together, with Legion reassuring Reesa that he could afford a $700,000 home.
While Legion always assured her that he had savings and money to pay the downpayment on relatively expensive homes in cash, multiple attempts to go through with the process fell through on several different homes, always for different reasons. The same suspicious circumstance also began to occur around a series of cars the couple intended to purchase.
After nine months, the couple became pregnant within months of meeting but unfortunately lost the pregnancy soon after. Despite the multiple setbacks, the two got married in January of 2022. In the following months, Teesa found out through some digging that Legion was not the VP of the condiment company or a former arena football player, he had falsified legal documents, lied about his social security number, created fake bank statements, and had even been having one-sided conversations with people who were not actually on the phone while in front of her. During that time Teesa also discovered he worked for a temp company as a forklift driver, had a criminal record, and had lied about his past marriages. Additionally, it is revealed that Legion has a twin brother who seemingly has the life he has been trying to portray.
The pair divorced by June of that year. She says she has since worked on forgiving herself for getting caught up in such a situation and for believing Legion’s many elaborate lies.
While some users had just discovered the content creator’s story, others were too invested as she wrapped up the series and posted the final video on Saturday. Teesa also held a two-hour live chat on the video-sharing platform, revealing more shocking information about the ordeal.
The saga has since completely blown up online, with many comparing it to a riveting television show. Streaming platform Tubi even commented, writing: “Starting now, no spoilers please” on part one of the 52-part playlist, receiving more than 27k likes.
The sentiment dubbing Teesa’s saga as “better than tv” was repeated countless times across her videos, with many people speculating her story will eventually be picked up for a movie or television series, similar to “Zola,” the 2021 film adapted from a 148 part Twitter thread posted by dancer Aziah Wells back in 2015.
“I just canceled my Hulu subscription,” said a comment on one video in the list, while another said, “Just canceled my Netflix subscription and handed my kids a box of Fruit Loops. They’re fine til Tuesday or so. Let’s go…”
In regards to why she felt the need to share her experience, the viral storyteller said during the live stream that she intended to help raise awareness for other women and forgive herself for falling for the elaborate scheme.
“I just know that everything was a lie. I have not found anything that proves something was true,” Teesa explained in a live chat. “I need to forgive myself; maybe I shouldn’t say forgive myself for being dumb, but definitely forgive myself, for you would rather be right and married than be obedient and patient.”
