After a tumultuous licensing dispute, Universal Music Group (UMG), the largest music company in the world, has pulled millions of its songs off of TikTok, leaving many people upset. 

This move has received widespread coverage, with Trevor Noah mentioning it in his opening monologue at the Grammy Awards Sunday. He chastised TikTok for stealing money from artists when “that’s Spotify’s job.” 

TikTok is an app that relies on audios that can be licensed songs or user created ‘sounds’, making the music owned by UMG a major part of the platform. 

UMG is a titan in the music industry and is also the company that owns the rights to millions of songs appearing all over TikTok, which almost guaranteed a conflict like this one would eventually come to pass 

When music companies and social platforms negotiate licensing agreements, it inevitably boils down to one side claiming that the other needs them more than they need the other side. This was the case between UMG and TikTok. 

UMG claimed TikTok would not exist without music and since they have such a giant collection of songs they license to them, TikTok should pay more for their catalog. 

TikTok maintained their belief that UMG artists get free promotion and advertising for their music on TikTok that they could not afford to do without and therefore, they should not be made to pay more. 

UMG was not convinced and declared they were not renewing their license with TikTok. The company started the process of removing all songs by UMG artists from the platform Jan. 31. 

Some of the biggest artists in the world can no longer be found on the platform, with artists like Drake, Taylor Swift and BTS among the most prominent. 

Massive artists like these will be just fine without the promotion that TikTok brings, but smaller and lesser-known artists will suffer. 

Smaller artists can have their careers changed overnight from a song going viral on TikTok. Now, they will no longer have that chance if they are signed with UMG. 

While UMG claimed to be doing this on behalf of their artists, it is clear that the artists will suffer the most, while some say TikTok is greedy by not being willing to pay more for the licensing of so many songs for their platform. 

I think that both sides are prioritizing profits over their artists and users respectively. It is hard to believe the focus is on people rather than earnings when the users and artists are the ones who are already feeling the impact of this situation. 

UMG knows the value of platforms like TikTok and the impact that they have, particularly with younger generations. This is why they are trying to get more money out of them while they can and attempting to shift the blame to TikTok for “bullying” them at the negotiating table. 

TikTok knows that its platform can persist without UMG’s music because the content on the app casts such a wide net and they are unwilling to cough up any extra money to keep their user’s experience unchanged. 

In these situations, it is always the little guys that lose the most, the small artists most of all. They are the ones who lose when two giants of their respective industries refuse to play ball. 

I dislike corporations as a general rule, so I find it hard to choose a side, but I know that artists deserve a platform like TikTok that can change their careers and this situation is affecting that greatly. 

I love TikTok and I love music, so I am just hoping for a resolution on both sides. My sincere plea to UMG is this; please don’t stop the music (Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop The Music” plays as we fade to black).

Categories: Arts & Entertainment