Music powerhouses such as Drake, Bob Marley, Kendrick Lamar, and Eminem have seen their catalogs restored on TikTok. This comes after Universal Music Group (UMG), one of the world’s largest record companies, ended its relationship with the social media platform earlier this year.
On May 1, both UMG and TikTok announced a multi-dimensional licensing agreement that will again make UMG’s entire discography available on TikTok. The announcement followed a three-month dispute between the two companies.
Lucian Grainge, UMG’s Chairman and CEO, expressed optimism about this new chapter in their relationship with TikTok.
He emphasized the importance of music, human artistry, and the welfare of the creative community. He also expressed his eagerness to collaborate with TikTok to further the interests of UMG’s artists and songwriters and to drive innovation in fan engagement and social music monetization.
Acknowledging the integral role of music in the TikTok ecosystem, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Chew, expressed his pleasure at finding a path forward with UMG. He committed to working together to drive value, discovery, and promotion for all of UMG’s artists and songwriters and deepen their ability to grow, connect, and engage with the TikTok community.
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The joint statement also addressed the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in music. Both TikTok and UMG pledged to work together to ensure that AI development across the music industry will protect human artistry and the economics that flow to those artists and songwriters.
TikTok also committed to working with UMG to remove unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform and to improve artist and songwriter attribution.
The TikTok UMG dispute
The dispute began in January when the two companies failed to agree on a new deal regarding artist compensation and AI. This disagreement prevented several artists from having their music on TikTok.
UMG claimed that TikTok accounts for only about 1% of their total revenue. They argued that this was evidence of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenue, and increasing reliance on music-based content.
UMG also accused TikTok of trying to intimidate them by selectively removing the music of certain developing artists while keeping songs from better-known ones. They criticized TikTok’s tactics, accusing the platform of using its power to hurt vulnerable artists and try to intimidate
