TikTok Brings Back Universal Music's Songs

TikTok and Universal Music Group have finally found an agreement over music royalties and UMG songs are back on the social platform.

The Background

Back in January, TikTok muted every song affiliated with Universal’s artists and authors, after falling out over royalty payments.

The Effects

It seems TikTok’s popularity and usage was not very affected by the move. However, it was bad publicity.

Especially after the news of the social app possibly being banned in the US, last thing TikTok needed was more bad publicity.

On the other side, UMG’s artists were very much impacted by their songs being muted on TikTok.

In fact, the Chinese app is currently the most popular music discovery and promotion engine on the net.

Because of this, there were exceptions.

Taylor Swift was still allowed to play on TikTok, to promote her latest album.

Not very nice to all other UMG’s artists ☹️

The Reality

Many artists started to ask for exceptions, like the one Swift got.

Quickly, it was clear the whole situation was a lose lose.

The two companies went back into negotiations and UMG songs were promptly brought back to TikTok.

Bottom Line

If you’re Taylor Swift nothing can stop you.

The music industry relies on social media more than ever, and on TikTok’s viral algorithm in particular.

Not great news for music enthusiasts for sure.