Taylor Swift, The Weeknd… Why you won’t hear them on TikTok anymore

End of contract. This 31 January Tuesday, the contract between Universal Music Group (UMG) and the TikTok platform has expired. Despite negotiations, it was not renewed and the American label was announced Remove all songs from your catalog of the platform.

At issue: Disagreement over Remuneration of artists and songwriters.

entire catalog Artists labeled with Universal will be removed from TikTok, the label suggests actu.fr

Inadequate remuneration

In an open letter published on its site, the label expresses its sorrow Lack of recognition To artists: “Ultimately, TikTok is trying to build a business based on music, without getting paid Fair value of music », denotes universal.

“Today, how to show TikTok Pays less to artists And songwriters, despite its large and growing user base(…), TikTok only approx 1% from our gross revenue,” says the music label.

Comments to which TikTok did not fail to respond by calling them out fake.

Universal Music has “chosen to refrain from supporting Powerful A platform that has more than one billion users And which serves as a free promotion and discovery vehicle for their talents,” responded TikTok on X (formerly Twitter).

Lack of security on the platform

According to UMG, which labels artists such as Mylene Farmer, Madonna, Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, or even Michel Sardou, TikTok “makes little effort to manage the large amount of content on its platform. »

Universal specifically points out the lack of protection for actors in the face of hate Harassment or else Deep faxAs singer Taylor Swift has been suffering lately.

“The only means available to request the removal of illegal or problematic content (…) is the process Monumentally heavy and inefficient », condemns the group, majority owned by businessman Vincent Bolloré.

Artificial intelligence at the center of the debate

Beyond Mediation efforts As Universal would have liked, the place of artificial intelligence on the platform also plays a role during these negotiations.

“TikTok lets the platform overflow AI-generated recordings – while developing tools to enable, promote and encourage AI musical creation right on the platform,” UMG denounced.

According to the label the problematic presence of AI, which will “greatly reduce Royalty (usage rights) for artists. »

Our artists have a primary responsibility to fight for a new contract under which they will be fairly compensated on a platform that effectively moderates human creativity, (…)

Owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok counts worldwide 1.2 billion Active users in 2023.

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