“Dancing to the tunes of Taylor Swift, The Weeknd or Eminem will no longer be possible on TikTok”

TAylor Swift definitely has no luck with social media. The best friend of teenage girls around the world has already faced false pornographic images featuring her on the social network X and now her publisher, Universal, has decided to remove her from the TikTok network, along with all its artists. The price of fame for an extremely wealthy singer, but the harbinger of a new upheaval in the turbulent history of the most recorded music. In both cases, the obvious culprit is artificial intelligence.

Universal, the world’s number one in music, announced on Tuesday 30 January that it has failed to reach an agreement with TikTok regarding artist remuneration and will consequently withdraw its catalog from the youth favorite network. With the previous agreement expiring on Wednesday January 31, it would in theory no longer be possible to lip service or dance to the tunes of Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Lady Gaga or Eminem on the network. In theory, because the measure would be too complicated to implement and we are not immune to last-minute agreements. The “Hold me or I’ll be miserable” From Universal is the latest cartridge from a group that controls nearly a third of the recorded music market in the Western world.

The standoff in any case testifies to a shift in Universal’s fight for remuneration and, by extension, its actors. TikTok pretends to be surprised by the reaction of the American major, condemning the greed of a company willing to sacrifice the promotion of its singers on a platform with one billion users. Universal counters that TikTok represents only 1% of its revenue and the remuneration offered by the network is lower than the previous contract and does not correspond to the true value of the artists or the phenomenal growth of the Chinese company.

Put your AI to work

But above all it highlights a real emerging threat. TikTok will try to get forms of packages that allow subscribers to work cheaply with its new artificial intelligence made available. TikTok Creative Assistant aims to help brands, their ads, and creators generate their own music. So, after the war on piracy, then streaming, here is a new frontier opening up, blurring the boundaries between more complex, original music, plagiarism and original creation. With the rise of streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple and Deezer, music is once again entering uncharted territory.