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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.

Trending on Billboard

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.”

Trending on Billboard

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.”

A music producer who says he worked on Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ 2023 album The Love Album: Off the Grid is accusing the hip-hop mogul of sexual assault and harassment, sex trafficking and various other forms of misconduct in a sprawling lawsuit filed Monday (Feb. 26).
In the complaint, filed by plaintiff Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones Jr. in New York federal court, the producer accuses Combs of “groping and touching” his anus and trying to groom him into engaging in sexual acts with Combs and other individuals, including Love Album producer Steven Aaron Jordan (a.k.a. Stevie J) and a cousin of Combs’ ex-girlfriend Yung Miami (named as a Jane Doe defendant). He also claims that Combs “forced” him to “solicit sex workers,” some of whom were underage, as well as to “perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.”

In one alleged incident from February 2023, Jones claims he woke up “naked, dizzy, and confused” in a “bed with two sex workers and Mr. Combs” at Combs’ home in Miami and “believes” he was drugged by Combs.

Trending on Billboard

The lawsuit, filed by attorney Tyrone Blackburn, names several more defendants whom Jones claims conspired with Combs in an alleged “RICO enterprise” to enable his misconduct: Universal Music Group (UMG), its subsidiary Motown Records, Combs’ label imprint Love Records, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, former Motown CEO/chairwoman Ethiopia Habtemariam; Combs’ chief of staff, Kristina Khorram; and Combs’ son, Justin Combs. Federal RICO cases, which are based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act traditionally used to target the mafia and drug cartels, are brought to more effectively sweep up members of alleged crime rings. (Notably, the ongoing Georgia criminal case against Young Thug that alleges the rapper ran a violent Atlanta street gang is based on a Georgia statute modeled off of the federal RICO law.)

In this case, Jones claims the “RICO enterprise” in question was set up to recruit sex workers, some of them underage, and to acquire and distribute drugs and guns out of Combs’ Miami home. He accuses the participants in the alleged enterprise of keeping him under their control by threatening him with violence, ostracism from the music industry and nonpayment for work on the album, which he says he still has not been compensated for despite having allegedly produced nine tracks.

The lawsuit also brings up an alleged September 2022 incident at Chalice Recording Studio in Hollywood, during a writing and producing camp for The Love Album, that allegedly resulted in a man being shot in the stomach following a “heated conversation” between Combs, his son Justin Combs and another unnamed man. Following the incident, Jones claims Combs forced him to lie to police by telling them the man was injured in a drive-by shooting outside. Jones is suing Combs, UMG, Motown, Love Records and Chalice Recording Studio for providing “inadequate or negligent security” during the camp.

In a statement sent to Billboard, Combs’ attorney Shawn Holley said: “Lil Rod is nothing more than a liar who filed a $30 billion lawsuit shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday. His reckless name-dropping about events that are pure fiction and simply did not happen is nothing more than a transparent attempt to garner headlines. We have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies. Our attempts to share this proof with Mr. Jones’ attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, have been ignored, as Mr. Blackburn refuses to return our calls. We will address these outlandish allegations in court and take all appropriate action against those who make them.”

A spokesperson for Justin Combs sent the following statement: “Justin Combs categorically denies these absurd allegations. They are all lies! This is a clear example of a desperate person taking desperate measures in hopes of a pay day. There will be legal consequences for all defamatory statements made about the Combs family.”

Representatives for UMG, Motown, Love Records, Grainge and Chalice Recording Studio did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Habtemariam could not be located for comment at press time.

Jones is asking for damages for loss of past and future income as well as “mental anguish, humiliation, embarrassment, stress and anxiety, emotional pain and suffering, and emotional distress”; punitive damages; and the costs of bringing the suit.

The Love Album was originally announced in May 2022 as a release on Combs’ newly formed imprint Love Records, to be released in tandem with UMG’s Motown. However, the album — which featured a laundry list of stars including Mary J. Blige, Burna Boy, John Legend, Justin Bieber and The Weeknd — was ultimately released independently in September 2023.

Jones’ lawsuit is just the latest in a string of legal accusations to be lodged against Combs over the past several months. In November, Combs’ longtime girlfriend, R&B singer Cassie, sued him for rape and physical abuse, though the case was promptly settled. He was subsequently sued by two more women for sexual assault and later by a Jane Doe who claimed Combs “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” her when she was 17. Combs has denied all of the allegations.

The Universal Music Group purchased a majority stake in Nigerian record company Mavin Global, the iconic label founded by Don Jazzy that is home to Rema, Ayra Starr, Crayon and Ladipoe, among others. The deal is expected to be completed by the third quarter, pending regulatory approval, the companies announced.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, Billboard reported in October that Mavin was being shopped by Shot Tower Capital at a valuation north of $125 million, with a sale price in the region of $150 million to $200 million; it was unclear if publishing was involved in the deal. As part of the investment arrangement, Don Jazzy — who founded Mavin in 2012, and also serves as CEO — and COO Tega Oghenejobo will continue to run the label.

“Our criteria for identifying partners is straightforward: great artists, great entrepreneurs, great people,” UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement announcing the deal. “With Don Jazzy, Tega, the Mavin Global team and their artist roster, we’ve found ideal partners with whom to grow together. Mavin’s brilliant artists have been catalysts in the transformation of Afrobeats into a global phenomenon and we’re thrilled to welcome them into the Universal Music Group family.”

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Mavin had already established a relationship with UMG, with Rema’s “Calm Down” — the biggest Afrobeats song of all time, which reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 last year — initially distributed by Virgin Music, with its remix featuring Selena Gomez licensed to Interscope; Starr, meanwhile, has a deal in place with Republic. “Calm Down” has racked up more than 1 billion on-demand streams in the U.S. alone since its release, with its global count many multiples higher.

The investment is designed to spur Mavin’s growth around the world, according to a press release, with focuses on both Mavin’s Artist Academy, which nurtures its roster in various musical and performance skills, and its executive leadership team, which is aimed at growing the next generation of African leaders in the music business.

“With our proven history of collaborations within the UMG family, we have a strong belief that they are the ideal partner for the next phase of our growth, given the diversity and potential of our business,” Oghenejobo said in a statement. “UMG is home to some of the world’s foremost music entrepreneurs and artists, making them a perfect match for our aspirations. By collaborating with UMG, we are dedicated to cultivating a vibrant creative environment that propels African music to new heights on the global stage.”

Winning the Mavin auction catapults UMG deeper into the Nigerian Afrobeats scene — the umbrella genre that encompasses Afropop, Afro fusion, high life and others that continues to explode around the globe. In the past several years, artists such as Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy have blossomed into global superstars, while the likes of Rema, Starr, Tems, Tyla, Ckay, Asake and Fireboy DML have led a wave of young, emerging talent coming from the African continent. The movement has gained momentum to the point that the Recording Academy introduced a new Grammy Awards category for best African music performance, which was awarded to Tyla’s “Water” at the honors earlier this month.

Additional reporting by Ed Christman.

Livestream shopping platform NTWRK is acquiring streetwear, music and sports-centric media company Complex Networks. The deal will create a new entity that the two companies claim will be “a new destination for ‘superfan’ culture” and bring an e-commerce marketplace into the former media brand’s ecosystem.
The news was announced Wednesday (Feb. 21), with investment from Main Street Advisors, Universal Music Group, Goldman Sachs and Interscope Records founder Jimmy Iovine. UMG will also come on board as a strategic partner and current Interscope chairman/CEO John Janick will join the company’s board.

NTWRK is acquiring Complex from Buzzfeed, which purchased the streetwear-focused media company in 2021 for $300 million. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though The New York Times reported last October that a deal worth $140 million was close; subsequent reporting in December put the price at slightly more than $100 million. NTWRK co-founder/CEO Aaron Levant — who initially created NTWRK alongside Jamie Iovine and Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, and co-founded ComplexCon with Complex founder Marc Ecko in 2016 — will become CEO of the new company.

Trending on Billboard

“Complex has been a beacon of culture and innovation for over two decades,” Levant said in a statement. “My journey with Complex began as an admirer of their original magazine in 2002 and it has now come full circle as I step into the leadership role. Alongside this impressive team, we will create the definitive global content, commerce and experiential platform of convergence culture.”

NTWRK has previously worked with several UMG artists, including Billie Eilish, Post Malone and BLACKPINK, the latter of whom worked with Takashi Murakami for Interscope’s 30th anniversary vinyl collection. UMG’s involvement, however, is not an exclusive one, and the new platform will remain open to artists of any label, major or independent.

“This partnership will give our artists access to a dynamic network to deepen connections with superfans through unique collaborations and cultural moments,” said Janick in a statement. “We share a collective vision on how D2C, experiential, brand partnerships and content are mutually reinforcing cornerstones of the fan experience. We will continue to sign and elevate new generations of great talent and we believe that we can best serve these artists through a holistic set of capabilities.”

The focus on the superfan is one that is a priority for UMG this year, with UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge writing in his New Year’s memo to staff that “the next focus of our strategy will be to grow the pie for all artists, by strengthening the artist-fan relationship through superfan experiences and products,” which he called part of “the blueprint for the labels of the future.”

The new company also comes amid a lot of changes in both the music and media spaces. UMG announced a huge label restructuring earlier this year, with Janick taking on oversight of Capitol Music Group and other labels, as the music major approaches looming layoffs. At the same time, Buzzfeed is believed to be selling Complex for much less than half of what it acquired it for just three years ago, amid a wider run of layoffs and closings of media outlets across the industry. Warner Music Group, which last year laid off 600 people, also announced that it would be selling some of its owned media properties, such as HipHopDX and Uproxx.

“Aaron Levant, along with Jamie Iovine and Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, are building an incredible platform and this acquisition will exponentially accelerate its growth,” Jimmy Iovine said in a statement. “Combining the power and reach of Complex with the NTWRK engine serving creators across music, fashion and art will be transformative for the next generation of consumer technology.”

A federal appeals court has overturned a massive $1 billion copyright verdict won by the major record labels against internet service provider Cox Communications, sending the case back for a new award to be calculated.
In a decision Tuesday (Feb . 20), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated the huge award against Cox over illegal downloading by its subscribers — one of the largest ever in an intellectual property lawsuit — on the grounds that part of the verdict was not supported by the law.

The ruling sets the stage for a new trial, but Cox could still be on the hook for heavy damages. That’s because, while the appeals court overturned the jury’s decision that Cox committed so-called vicarious copyright infringement, it affirmed that the internet service provider (ISP) had still committed a different type of infringement.

Trending on Billboard

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group all sued Cox in 2018, seeking to hold the internet giant itself liable for alleged wrongdoing committed by its users. The labels said Cox had ignored hundreds of thousands of infringement notices and had never permanently terminated a single subscriber accused of stealing music.

The case was part of a string of such lawsuits filed against ISPs around the country. Charter Communications, RCN Corp., Grande Communications and others were hit with the same claims around the same time.

ISPs like Cox are often shielded from lawsuits over illegal downloading by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. But the judge overseeing the case said that Cox had forfeited that protection by failing to terminate people who repeatedly violated copyright law.

Stripped of that immunity, jurors held Cox liable in December 2019 for the infringement of 10,017 separate songs. They awarded the labels more than $99,000 for each song, adding up to $1 billion. Cox eventually appealed that verdict to the Fourth Circuit, a federal appeals court that could overturn it.

In Tuesday’s ruling, the appeals court said that the jury had been correct to find that Cox had willfully committed so-called contributory copyright infringement — meaning the company had induced or authorized its customers to pirate the music. But the court said that the labels had failed to show that Cox committed vicarious infringement, which would have required proving that the ISP profited from the illegal downloading.

“The continued payment of monthly fees for internet service, even by repeat infringers, was not a financial benefit flowing directly from the copyright infringement itself,” the appeals court wrote. “Sony has not identified any evidence that customers were attracted to Cox’s internet service or paid higher monthly fees because of the opportunity to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

Because part of the verdict was tossed out, the court ruled that a new trial would be needed to recalculate the damages award — this time, based only on the finding of contributory infringement.

Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s largest music company, has acquired a 25.8% interest in Chord Music Partners for $240 million. As part of the deal, UMG will now handle distribution and publishing administration for Chord’s existing catalog, provided by UMG’s Virgin Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), respectively.

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Formed in 2021 by KKR and Dundee Partners, the investment office of the Hendel family, Chord owns over 60,000 copyrights. This includes stakes in top songs like “Dreams” and “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, “La Grange” by ZZ Top, “Counting Stars” and “Apologize” by OneRepublic, “Redbone” by Childish Gambino, “I Like Me Better” by Lauv, “Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi, “All Of Me” by John Legend, “Girls Like You” and “Sugar” by Maroon 5, “Halo” by Beyonce and “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri.

Following the completion of the transaction, KKR will exit Chord. Previously, it was the majority stakeholder in the catalog firm. Now, Dundee is increasing its share to 74.2% and UMG will hold the remaining minority share.

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UMG was advised by Goldman Sachs, Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Freshfields. DLA Piper and Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP served as legal advisors to Dundee. Fifth Third Bank, National Association served as financial advisor and provided committed financing to Dundee and UMG. The Raine Group served as the exclusive financial advisor and Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, LLP served as legal advisor to Chord Music Partners. Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal counsel to KKR.

Lucian Grainge, chairman/CEO of UMG, said in a statement: “Finding partners who share our passion for identifying iconic songs and recordings that will stand the test of time and deliver long-term growth is essential, which is why we’re so pleased to be working with Stephen and Sam Hendel and Dundee Partners. With the leadership of Jody Gerson at UMPG, Nat Pastor and JT Myers at Virgin, and the support of our experienced creative executives around the world, no one can do more with music rights than our teams. We look forward to creating maximum commercial and creative value for the songwriters and artists in Chord and building for the future.”

Boyd Muir, UMG executive vp/CFO/president of operations added: “We’re excited to partner with the Hendel family in Chord for a number of reasons. First, KKR and Dundee have built a very high-quality catalog that will benefit from our first-rate management and global capabilities. Second, this new structure provides us with an efficient vehicle for future catalog acquisitions, without significant capital allocation through a combination of leverage and partner equity capital. And finally, it offers us the perfect partner to approach future growth opportunistically and flexibly, one who is equally bullish on the long-term prospects for music.”

Sam Hendel, Dundee Partners’ managing principal/co-founder of Chord, added: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with Universal Music Group and embarking on this next exciting chapter for Chord. By combining a best-in-class financial acquisition vehicle with the world’s leading music company, we are creating both a premier platform for music investment as well as a permanent home for premier artists’ legacies and their iconic cultural works. We’d like to thank the team at KKR for their partnership and creating a strong foundation for Chord and its future success.”

“We are grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with many leading artists and to create significant value for our investors by building Chord into a differentiated and scaled portfolio,” said Jenny Box, partner at KKR. “We believe that Dundee and UMG will drive further value creation for artists and that they share our commitment to being respectful stewards of artists’ music.”

Universal Music Group is poised to open its first Capitol Studios outside of Hollywood, plus live performance spaces, music education academies and a new record label, as part of a collaboration with DGMC in the burgeoning music hub of the United Arab Emirates. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts […]

More than one third of the songs — at least 17 tracks — on Billboard’s TikTok Top 50 chart are no longer available for use on the app after Universal Music Group‘s negotiations with the platform fell apart last week. UMG said the Bytedance-owned company refuses to pay “fair value for the music.”
The missing tracks include several of the most popular songs on TikTok: Muni Long’s “Made for Me” (No. 2 on the TikTok Top 50), Xavi’s “La Diabla” (No. 7), Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy” (No. 9), and Lana Del Rey’s “Let the Light In” (No. 11). 

The absence impacts both recent releases — Ariana Grande’s “Yes, And?” along with a pair of songs from Nicki Minaj’s December album — and catalog: Lesley Gore’s “Misty,” originally released way back in 1963, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which came out in 2002 but charted on the Hot 100 for the first time recently due to a synch in the film Saltburn. 

Users still appear to be able to still make videos with an official “orchestral version” of “Murder on the Dancefloor” — likely because it’s licensed to a different label. And even though UMG and TikTok’s licensing agreement expired, 10k.Caash’s “Aloha,” which was released by the UMG label Def Jam in 2019, is available to soundtrack TikTok videos as of Thursday morning.

In addition, TikTok has long had a vibrant bootleg scene, which means that in some cases, users have uploaded their own versions of UMG songs or made remixes in place of the official sounds. Those bootlegs were also a source of frustration for the record company, which said last week that “TikTok makes little effort to deal with the vast amounts of content on its platform that infringe our artists’ music.” It’s worth noting, however, that labels often encourage remixers to rework their artists’ songs without the proper clearances in the hopes that it starts a viral trend.

TikTok has been a dominant force in the music industry since 2019, transforming both marketing and signing strategy. “We fully immerse ourselves in the diverse subcultures of TikTok,” said Alec Henderson, vp of digital at the independent label APG, in December. “We have weekly meetings dedicated to sharing things that we’re seeing there. We view the TikTok viral chart with a competitive mindset. And we put a high emphasis on working with artists that are native to the platform.”

As the industry became increasingly focused on TikTok, it also became increasingly uneasy about the platform’s power. The app became increasingly saturated — brands, movies, videogames, cats, ASMR, you name it — which made marketing music both more expensive and less effective. Labels are used to having some level of influence over promotional levers; TikTok proved frustratingly hard to leverage.

Tension over the platform’s low payouts started to grow as well. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, “doesn’t view music as a value add,” one senior executive told Billboard in the fall of 2022. “They just view music as a cost center they have to limit as much as possible.” 

“The [payout] numbers are horrifying,” said a manager at the time. A marketer who oversaw the campaign for a single that was used in roughly half a million TikTok videos, earning billions of views, found that his artist took home less than $5,000 from the platform. It was no surprise when UMG CEO Lucian Grainge fired a warning shot late in 2022, noting pointedly at an industry conference that a value gap was “forming fast in the new iterations of short-form video.”

Last week, Universal Music Group said that its license agreement with TikTok was set to expire on Jan. 31. “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 said in an open letter. 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.”

After UMG issued its statement, TikTok hit back, accusing the record company of promoting a “false narrative.” It’s “sad and disappointing,” TikTok added, “that [UMG] has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” These comments elicited yet another response from UMG.

If the standoff between the two companies continues, it will start to affect even more music: At the end of the month, TikTok will have to take down any song that Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) has a stake in. Many UMPG songwriters collaborate with artists signed to other labels (or are signed as artists on other labels). This means that the number of songs that become unusable on TikTok could balloon.

Artists can market their music elsewhere, of course — TikTok has competitors in both YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. However, neither of those apps have demonstrated the ability to break a song with the speed and intensity of TikTok.

The music industry’s Cold War with TikTok just turned very hot — and extremely complicated. By the end of the month, Universal Music Group (UMG) will require the platform to take down music it controls even a small part of, by using what some music executives call “the nuclear option.” This will prevent some other rights holders from making money on TikTok — but at least some of them are cheering it on. 

On Jan. 30, the day before UMG’s latest deal with TikTok lapsed, the company announced in an open letter that “we must call time out on TikTok” and began removing its recorded music from the platform. After a 30-day grace period, UMG says it will also require TikTok to take down any song in which Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) controls any rights. That means songs by Harry Styles, SZA and Bad Bunny; those with writing credit from creators like Metro Boomin and Jack Antonoff; and even those that sample compositions by UMPG songwriters. In some markets, that might account for more than half of the music used on the platform. 

The question is what this means for the rest of the business. Styles, SZA and Bad Bunny are three of the biggest acts signed to or distributed by Sony Music Entertainment, so this would affect that label, as well as Warner Music Group, BMG and scores of independents. From the end of February until UMG and TikTok reach a new licensing deal, they will not earn any money on music to which UMG has any rights — a relatively minor income stream at this point — while losing out on an important source of promotion. In the long term, of course, a win for UMG that pushes TikTok to pay more for the rights to music could also help the entire industry.

This Cold War turned hot pretty suddenly. For years, rights holders have embraced TikTok as a promotional vehicle while griping about the short-form video platform’s low payouts in what seemed like a repeat of the music industry’s contentious relationship with YouTube. Both can pay less than other platforms because in many cases they can essentially operate under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows them to make available content uploaded by users until rights holders ask for a takedown. In language that sounds like it could have come from YouTube a decade ago — or from a file-sharing service a decade before that, for that matter — in a statement released on social media, TikTok said that UMG had abandoned a popular platform “that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent.” Basically, they offer exposure. But as creators and rights holders might say — and here you have to imagine a Borscht Belt delivery — you could DIE of exposure! 

UMG’s move came at the worst possible time for TikTok: the day before a Senate committee hearing on child safety and social media, during an escalating Middle East conflict that has focused negative attention on TikTok’s Chinese ownership, and during a week when much of the music business was in Los Angeles for the Grammys. This isn’t entirely a coincidence: UMG’s long-term deal actually expired at the end of 2023, and Jan. 31 was just the end of a one-month extension. (A source close to TikTok said that the two sides were close to a deal at the end of December, while a source close to UMG said that was not the case.) Fair or not, the pressure in Washington could be substantial. (I have serious concerns about a Chinese-owned app becoming an important source of news on Taiwan, but I’m not sure that has much to do with music licensing.)  

So far, there has been some support for UMG from other companies in the music business. Neither of the other two major labels would comment — Sony declined and a spokesperson for Warner did not return messages — and it’s unlikely that they will, for antitrust reasons. Primary Wave, Downtown and Hipgnosis have expressed support for Universal, though. And at a Grammy Week music publishers event, National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) president/CEO David Israelite pointed out that the model contract with TikTok that’s used by many NMPA members expires in April.

Tik-tok, indeed.

The dynamic here is complicated but potentially revolutionary. For the last two decades, most of the negotiations between media and technology companies have involved a few rights holders that each control significant amounts of content and a platform that has a larger share in its market than they do — think labels and streaming services or book publishers and Amazon. Since antitrust law almost always prevents big companies from negotiating together — a lesson Apple and some book publishers learned the hard way — the platforms have an advantage. In this case, UMG managed to get more leverage by using publishing rights that by their nature will affect impact a lot of compositions, creating a situation where some small companies can cheer it on. 

The question is what happens after February. Rights holders can live without the money they make on TikTok, but what about the platform’s promotional value for breaking artists? For now, presumably, artists on other labels who don’t work with UMPG songwriters will gain an advantage. If this dispute lasts a few months, that might give smaller labels enough of an advantage to matter. If it lasts longer than that, though, TikTok could face more competition, too. The company has suggested that music accounts for a modest amount of the platform’s value, but that would be tested if TikTok has to compete against other short-form video platforms that have rights to use music that it doesn’t.

The more likely scenario is that UMGand TikTok will reach an agreement — perhaps one that both will grumble about but accept — and then over time find ways to work together that benefit both sides, plus creators of all kinds. Short-form video could eventually grow into a truly important revenue stream. By that time, of course, a new platform will probably come along to challenge that, too.