Earlier this month, the music industry was hit with its biggest shake-up in years when Universal Music Group announced that it would be pulling the entirety of its catalogue – which covers everyone from K-pop stars BTS to Taylor Swift and legacy acts such as Abba – from TikTok.
In an open letter, UMG said the decision was made in protest at the platform’s low compensation rates, lack of protections around AI deepfakes and low safety standards for TikTok users. Universal also alleged that TikTok tried to “intimidate” the label by “selectively removing the music of … our developing artists, while keeping on the platform our audience-driving global stars”. TikTok’s brief response decried UMG’s “false narrative and rhetoric”.
The move wasn’t a bluff: less than a day after the announcement, music by Universal artists began to leave the platform; earlier this week, music written by artists signed to Universal’s publishing arm also began to disappear. This means that any music that samples or is co-written by a Universal publishing artist, whether they have a 1% share in the songwriting or 100%, can no longer be used as a sound on TikTok. This includes TikTok-aided hits such as Harry Styles’s As It Was and SZA’s Kill Bill, as well as soon-to-be-released songs currently being promoted. Some analysts have estimated that the publishing takedown could result in up to 80% of music on the platform being removed, which TikTok disputes, saying it estimates 20-30% will be affected.
UMG’s mass takedown is drastic, but there was always going to be a breaking point with TikTok. When the app began to gain popularity in 2018, industry figures almost immediately treated it like a golden goose, thrilled by the way unsigned, previously unknown artists such as Lil Nas X and Jawsh 685 were suddenly serious players on the Billboard charts without much, if any, promotion outside TikTok itself. When Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams went viral on the platform in 2020, it became clear that the app was remoulding the way consumers listened to music: old music could easily become new again provided it had the right treatment.
Songs that were big on TikTok started streaming in the hundreds of millions, even billions, in a single year, sending considerable revenue to artists and labels. It’s been a boon for live music, too: in 2018, US indie-rock artist Mitski played to 2,000 people in London; this year, a handful of TikTok-viral songs later, she will play to more than 20,000.
But TikTok soon started to feel like a burden for artists. For years, acts such as Halsey and Florence Welch have complained about label expectations that they should use the platform to promote upcoming music. Other artists have suggested that labels are prone to holding songs hostage until they have enough TikTok buzz, and artists such as Noah Kahan, who has benefitted from TikTok over the past year, seem acutely aware of their perceived reliance on it: Kahan reacted to UMG’s cull with a wry video in which he joked about being “a TikTok artist”.
Critics say that TikTok encourages artists to create a certain kind of music that’s seemingly designed to go viral. Often, the ploy works, evidenced by the proliferation of hits that utilise bold, easily recognisable samples from the 90s and 2000s.
It’s also hugely debatable as to whether TikTok virality can translate into lasting success: US artist Steve Lacy made headlines in 2022 after complaining that fans at his shows were only there to film a snippet of him playing his viral song Bad Habit. New Zealand artist Benee, who hit the US charts in 2020 with her pandemic-viral song Supalonely, has since failed to replicate that success.
Over the past year, another problem has emerged: such a high volume of songs go viral on TikTok every day that fewer and fewer of those viral songs make an impact outside the app. Last year, most of the viral songs on the platform that found real-world success were by established artists such as Doja Cat and Central Cee – both of whom, admittedly, initially found fame via the platform – with only a few songs, such as South African singer Tyla’s Water and K-pop band Fifty Fifty’s Cupid, genuinely breaking through.
All of this is to say: TikTok’s relationship with the music industry was never sustainable. As many digital media outlets realised in the mid-2010s, when they “pivoted to video” in an attempt to placate Facebook’s algorithm, only for the bottom to fall out of that platform, it’s never wise to place the fate of an entire industry in the hands of a private company whose motivations and modes of operation are opaque at best. Big stars, who already have built-in fanbases and effective marketing machines, won’t be profoundly affected by their music being off TikTok, but new stars will.
At the same time, TikTok is keenly aware of how damaging Universal’s takedowns will be to its user experience. It recently conducted a trial in Australia and New Zealand in which popular songs were removed from the platform for some users; engagement time cratered, confirming that users want to hear big songs and participate in their associated trends.
In all likelihood, Universal’s decision will have a self-defeating ouroboros effect: even if songs from independent artists, Sony and Warner fill the void left by the Drakes and Swifts of the world, it’s probable that user engagement will have already diminished by then, leaving non-Universal artists to fight for scraps.
It seems unlikely that Universal will reverse this decision until TikTok agrees to higher compensation rates for artists, which itself doesn’t seem like a sure thing. For all the short-term damage that the move may cause to emerging artists, though, it seems that this seismic event will be a wake-up call for many: it reveals just how lazy so much of the industry has become, pursuing virality on one extremely fickle platform at the expense of all else. It will probably require many to instead pursue what they’ve become increasingly allergic to: some genuinely new ideas.
• This article was updated on Saturday 2 March to add TikTok’s estimate of the amount of music affected on its platform.
