By: Jhon Cando

Music is the composition of symphonies created to please our ears with its tones and melodies that cause us to experience a good feeling inside or simply just make us want to groove. TikTok is an exemplary case for this since it is a musical app currently one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide with over 1.7 billion users as of 2023. An incredibly big audience awaits to share and express ideas and emotions through a short video-sharing tool mainly depending on the music. It is actually thanks to applications like TikTok that underground artists for example can get their music to be shared with the world and get recognition for it, while of course attributing to big celebrities and icon stars. Yet, what if one of the biggest elements of the world’s most trending platform just vanished?

This 30th of January Universal Music Group (UMG) biggest music company in the world sued the social media platform TikTok due to a lack of agreement, ceasing licensing of the content of famous music artists. After months of negotiated terms, UMG accuses TikTok of doing nothing in attempting to stop AI-generated music on their platform. Due to this, UMG has pulled hundreds of songs from top artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weekend, and Bad Bunny, amongst others from their catalog. TikTok has served as a promotional tool for upcoming and leading artists in the music industry, according to UMG TikTok tried to intimidate them into “accepting a deal worth less than the previous deal, far less than fair market value and not reflective of their exponential growth”.

With TikTok being prohibited from the license of many popular songs, users have taken a turn against the platform, ending in revolts and overall unappreciation towards the app, in the end, as said earlier, it is one of the main elements of the app’s functionality at this point. Further news is set to come out, for now, dancing and listening to full silence is the new mandatory trend TikTok users are experiencing.

Bibliography:

Cain,S.(2024, Jan, 31).”Universal Music Group threatens to pull song catalog from TikTok in furious open letter” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/jan/31/tiktok-universal-music-group-umg-music-catalogue-rights-negotiation#:~:text=In%20a%20blistering%20open%20letter,and%20not%20reflective%20of%20their
Shaw,L.(2024, Feb, 4).”The World’s Largest Music Company Goes Nuclear on TikTok” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-04/taylor-swift-is-off-tiktok-why-universal-music-pulled-its-songs