More than one-third of the songs \u2014 at least 17 tracks \u2014 on Billboard\u2019s TikTok Top 50 chart are no longer available for use on the app after Universal Music Group\u2018s negotiations with the platform fell apart last week. UMG said the Bytedance-owned company refuses to pay \u201cfair value for the music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The missing tracks include several of the most popular songs on TikTok: Muni Long\u2019s \u201cMade for Me\u201d (No. 2 on the TikTok Top 50), Xavi\u2019s \u201cLa Diabla\u201d (No. 7), Drake\u2019s \u201cRich Baby Daddy\u201d (No. 9), and Lana Del Rey\u2019s \u201cLet the Light In\u201d (No. 11).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The absence impacts both recent releases \u2014 Ariana Grande\u2019s \u201cYes, And?\u201d along with a pair of songs from Nicki Minaj\u2019s December album \u2014 and catalog: Lesley Gore\u2019s \u201cMisty,\u201d originally released way back in 1963 and Sophie Ellis-Bextor\u2019s \u201cMurder on the Dancefloor,\u201d which came out in 2002 but charted on the Hot 100 for the first time recently due to a synch in the film Saltburn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Users still appear to be able to make videos with an official \u201corchestral version\u201d of \u201cMurder on the Dancefloor\u201d \u2014 likely because it\u2019s licensed to a different label. And even though UMG and TikTok\u2019s licensing agreement expired at 10k.Caash\u2019s \u201cAloha,\u201d released by the UMG label Def Jam in 2019, is available to soundtrack TikTok videos as of Thursday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, TikTok has long had a vibrant bootleg scene, which means that in some cases, users have uploaded their versions of UMG songs or made remixes in place of the official sounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those bootlegs were also a source of frustration for the record company, which said last week, “TikTok makes little effort to deal with the vast amounts of content on its platform that infringe our artists\u2019 music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the industry became increasingly focused on TikTok, it became increasingly uneasy about its power. The app started to get saturated \u2014 with brands, movies, video games, cats, ASMR, and more battling for attention \u2014 making marketing music more expensive and less effective. Labels are used to having some influence over promotional levers; TikTok proved frustratingly hard to leverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tension over the platform\u2019s low payouts started to grow as well. TikTok\u2019s parent company, ByteDance, \u201cdoesn\u2019t view music as a value add,\u201d one senior executive told Billboard in the fall of 2022. \u201cThey just view music as a cost center. They have to limit as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the standoff between the two companies continues, it will 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many UMPG songwriters collaborate with artists signed to other labels (or are signed as artists on other labels). This means the number of songs that become unusable on TikTok could balloon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than one-third of the songs \u2014 at least 17 tracks \u2014 on Billboard\u2019s TikTok Top 50 chart are no longer available for use on the app after Universal Music Group\u2018s negotiations with the platform fell apart last week. UMG said the Bytedance-owned company refuses to pay \u201cfair value for the music.\u201d Impact on Popular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[142,33,85,141],"genre":[],"artist":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-bytedance","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-tiktok","11":"tag-universal-music-group"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4065,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions\/4065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fgenre&post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistherald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fartist&post=4063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}