Final 12 months, TikTok tried to reply a seemingly easy query: What would TikTok be with out music?
In February 2023, the corporate ran assessments in Australia limiting the quantity of licensed music some customers encountered on the app. TikTok by no means revealed the outcomes of these assessments to the general public, however some Australians who had their music libraries restricted took to Twitter (now X) to complain. “wtf is up with tiktok eradicating like half the sounds??? like i swear ive seen SO many tiktoks the place the sound has been eliminated,” tweeted one person.
The proof is barely anecdotal, however these tweets counsel that having restricted entry to licensed music did have not less than some affect on the person expertise in Australia.
Since its inception, the worth of music has been an existential query for TikTok. This comes as no shock; the corporate began out because the lipsyncing app Musical.ly, and in its present type, it is without doubt one of the best music discovery instruments on this planet. However for the reason that modern-day TikTok launched as a common social media app — one that also options plenty of music — the corporate has struggled to determine how huge a task music ought to play of their enterprise — and the way a lot they need to should pay for it.
Within the final 12 months or so, TikTok has fought a chronic battle towards Common Music Group over music licensing charges, AI, and security issues, resulting in UMG’s three-month boycott of the platform; downsized elements of its music group; shut down the event of TikTok Music, its nascent music streaming app; and, final week, “walked away” from Merlin’s makes an attempt to barter a renewed collective license for the 30,000 indie labels and distributors it represents. As a substitute, citing points round fraudulent content material, TikTok is barely pursuing direct offers with Merlin’s member labels.
The UMG feud particularly appeared to signify a significant turning level in TikTok’s notion of the worth of music. The stalemate, which lasted from February to Could, primarily took the small experiments achieved in Australia and introduced them to a world stage with the world’s single largest catalog. Everybody from stars like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Drake and the Weeknd, all the way down to small artists signed to labels utilizing UMG distributor Virgin, had been faraway from the platform in a single day. If any occasion would have proved that music had negotiating energy over TikTok, it will’ve been this one — however the affect was rather more restricted than the music biz would have hoped.
From speaking to TikTok customers throughout the UMG feud, many felt that the app expertise was largely the identical. Not often, if ever, would anybody discover a video on their “For You Web page” with muted UMG audio. No matter unknowable algorithm controls that feed merely adjusted to serve movies with still-available songs as a substitute, seamlessly. The one time a person would discover the distinction is that if they had been making a video themselves and realized they couldn’t discover songs from a UMG-affiliated artist.
Plus, UMG artists huge and small proved that they nonetheless wished to make content material for the app, regardless that doing so diminished the strain UMG might placed on TikTok to enhance their compensation. Some UMG artists performed their songs stay as a substitute of utilizing the UMG-owned recording. Others would use unauthorized remixes (together with sped up, slowed down and mashed up variations) of their UMG-controlled songs. Some ended up putting direct offers with the platform or discovering contractual workarounds to skirt the ban, and the ultimate nail within the coffin seemingly got here when Taylor Swift’s catalog all of the sudden got here again to TikTok on April 11 —– full with a particular marketing campaign round her then-upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Division.
When the 2 firms lastly reached a deal three weeks later, simply earlier than UMG’s subsequent earnings name, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge spoke triumphantly in regards to the new TikTok deal. “This new chapter in our relationship with TikTok focuses on the worth of music, the primacy of human artistry and the welfare of the artistic group,” Grainge stated. It’s fairly attainable that, with the brand new deal, UMG extracted lots of the concessions that it wished from TikTok.
Nonetheless, general, the consequences of the three-month standoff had been fairly restricted: many TikTok customers didn’t discover a change, whereas UMG’s stream depend went unaffected. The important thing takeaway is that artists, determined for promotion, would nonetheless make musical content material for the app without spending a dime, even when it infringed on their very own unlicensed copyrights. It turned a race to the underside, like so many different issues in music.
So it comes as little shock that when Merlin’s TikTok license got here up for renegotiation, TikTok performed hardball —– or reasonably, TikTok simply refused to play ball with Merlin altogether.
As a substitute, TikTok desires to license its 30,000 indie file label members individually — a transfer which Merlin sees as an try and “fractionalize” members to “reduce” licensing prices, in line with a letter Merlin despatched to its labels final week.
The entire thought of Merlin — which says it represents 15% of music repertoire globally — is for these small, particular person labels to have the ability to band collectively and negotiate deal phrases with digital companions which are not less than in the identical neighborhood as their greater main label brethren. Antitrust legal guidelines forestall Merlin from telling its members what to do, which means TikTok is technically free to barter individually and bypass their coalition. Even when Merlin might pull such a transfer to band collectively its membership towards TikTok, it’s laborious to think about a boycott of indie music going any higher than UMG’s.
Optically, it’s one factor for TikTok to face as much as the most important music firm on this planet and argue that UMG had put their very own greed above the pursuits of their artists and songwriters” in an try and decrease the charges it needed to pay the label. It’s one other solely for the app, which has over a billion customers, to lowball the little guys.
Overshadowing all of this, in fact, is the truth that TikTok’s company guardian Bytedance is in a court docket battle with the U.S. authorities that, if it loses, might imply it will be compelled to promote its U.S. enterprise. In preparation, TikTok is probably going reducing prices wherever it might probably. Given how powerful it’s for the music business to stroll away from TikTok, it’s sadly one of many best locations to start out.
So what’s the worth of music to TikTok? It’s been a shifting goal all through the corporate’s historical past. In mild of current occasions, nevertheless, I’ll allow you to be the decide.
This story was printed as a part of Billboard’s new music expertise e-newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Join ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s different newsletters, right here.