Music licensing is complicated, across every industry, but that is okay. Things got tricky quickly between Tik Tok and Universal Music (UMG). This is the thing that web3 and the crypto fanatics could never learn. Rights are licensed not transferred. Artists and companies license rights they don't give them away.
Is it messy? Sure. Negotiations are. But nobody gives up their artistic rights in perpetuity. And any crypto zealots that thought they could negotiate that into the blockchain were sorely mistaken. This situation below is complicated, yes. But If UMG was forced to give TikTok rights in perpetuity it would be worse... because they'd never do it. In games we know that music licenses are temporary and not permanent.
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Billboard: "More Than One Third of TikTok’s Most Popular Songs Are Gone After UMG Fallout. With Universal Music Group and TikTok clashing over licensing terms, at least 17 tracks on Billboard's TikTok Top 50 chart can no longer be used on the app." (Feb 6, 2024)
Billboard: https://lnkd.in/gRXh92SH
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TheTimesUK: "TikTok faces legal battle with Universal Music over copyrightThe music label publicly withdrew its songs from the app at the end of January, but users are finding ways to dodge restrictions" (Feb 12 2024)
TheTimeUK: https://lnkd.in/g-YX3rAS
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Vox: Who’ll blink first: The world’s largest music company or TikTok?
Why Taylor Swift, Drake, and Bad Bunny have been muted on TikTok dance videos. (Sean Rameswaram & Hady Mawajdeh) (Feb 13, 2024)
"At the end of January, when Universal Music Group (UMG) failed to negotiate a new licensing deal with TikTok, it removed its entire music catalog from the app. Just like that, thousands of videos featuring music by artists like Drake, Taylor Swift, and Bad Bunny were suddenly silent.
UMG said it made the decision because TikTok offered to pay only a fraction of the rate that other social platforms offer. For its part, TikTok said that Universal was putting “their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
Some of those artists and songwriters have spoken out about the situation. “I think it’s ass-backward, and at the very least we should have known,” said Jack Antonoff to reporters in the press room after winning Producer of the Year at the Grammys earlier this month. “You got a whole industry being like, ‘You’ve got to do everything; you’ve got to do everything, and here’s where you’ve got to do it,’ and then one day it’s like, ‘Poof!’”
Musicians aren’t the only ones upset about this disruption. Content creators like Jarred Jermaine, who breaks down music samples on TikTok, posted a video of himself in tears claiming that videos he created that contained UMG music were taken down. And dancer and content creator Lars Gummer told the Daily Beast that he went from “shocked” to “disappointed.”
(keep reading)
Vox: https://lnkd.in/gxh8KM4k
#musicindustry #musiclicensing #iprights #tiktok ##umg #universalmusic
Quadruple Platinum Recording Artist Paul Anthony Cooke of Sade fame. 'The Price of Justice is Eternal Publicity'. Author, Manager, Good guy. PSP and Pride founder 1981, Sade founder 1982. Founder of the Neo Soul genre.
2moI learned that the major record companies and publishers are effectively organised crime groups. And that artists and music rights groups are a part of the OCG's. Read my work on @amazon that exposes their operations of theft and protectionism! @NME @MusicWeek @RollingStone @AP