Author | Ding Qianwen Editor | Fan Zhihui
Since Universal Music and TikTok broke up last month, TikTok’s music circle ecology is also changing.
After Universal Music Group (umg) removed about 3 million songs with recording copyrights from TikTok in early February, on March 1, Universal Music Copyright Management Group (umpg) officially removed nearly 4 million songs it represents. By then, the works of artists such as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber will be completely deleted on TikTok, and the work interface will be reset to zero with one click.
In this tug-of-war between the two giants, who is more hurt? How will it affect the current music ecology?
mute tiktok, who is more hurt?
Looking back at the public statements issued by Universal Music and TikTok in the past month, the conflict between the two has become tense.
Obviously, as a social media platform with more than 1 billion users, TikTok now not only assumes a simple social function, but also has a profound impact on the music industry in terms of music promotion and promotion of music trends.
For example, in 2023, more than half of the top charts on the Billboard Hot 100 list will be affected by the popularity of TikTok, and the TikTok Billboard Top 50 list, which uses user participation as an indicator, is also a major influence on the spread of musicians’ works. wind vane.
It is not difficult to see that Universal Music and TikTok’s tough approach may obviously seriously affect the promotion rhythm and communication strategies of many Universal Music artists.
For example, Universal Music artist Cody Fry posted a short video on TikTok saying that he felt "like a person standing between two colliding planets." As a musician who has benefited from tiktok's viral spread, as early as 2021, cody fry's work "i hear a symphony" became popular on tiktok.
Recently, "Things You Said", a collaboration between Cody Fry and Abby Cates, is also becoming popular on TikTok and Douyin. It is also widely used by Douyin users as the BGM of a video with a sense of fate. He believes that even though he was not aware of the negotiations between the two companies, as a musician, he was "still frustrated with the way this was handled."
Similarly, after losing the blessing of tiktok's viral effect, more and more songwriters and artists under Universal Music or in external cooperation may become the most direct "victims."
For example, even though Dua Lipa is affiliated with Warner Music, its songs such as "Houdini" and "Training Season" all have producer Danny L Harle who is currently signed with Universal Music participating in the lyrics and music, and these works will also be affected by the removal; Furthermore, Taylor Swift, who is about to release a new album in April, will also face the lack of a powerful channel for disseminating her new album to global audiences.
And its less well-known artists are facing a more severe situation. For example, Conan Gray, who once became famous with the song "Heather" on TikTok, lamented, "At this speed, I will never have another song." It was a hit and my career was definitely over."
Singer mareux, who used tiktok to rise from obscurity to the Coachella stage, mentioned in an interview with "tmz" that integrating musicians' music into tiktok is a good marketing method. "Tiktok's exposure can change musicians career, although musicians do not make a lot of money directly from TikTok, the exposure generated will help musicians make money in different ways."
He also believes that the ending of Universal Music and TikTok may also affect music People get new sources of income from TikTok. "If Universal Music really cares about their musicians, it should improve their contracts instead of destroying their unlimited opportunities on TikTok."
Based on this, some musicians believe that in addition to Universal Music, TikTok should also pay more attention to music, so that the differences between the two leading companies can be resolved, instead of hastily deleting music works at the expense of musicians.
Of course, as umg and umpg remove their music, although the time period is not long enough, tiktok will inevitably be affected by the lack of copyright to some extent.
Many industry sources generally believe that the disappearance of Universal Music’s music library will affect 60% to 80% of the music in TikTok’s music library. However, TikTok also categorically denied this, claiming "In the United States and the United Kingdom, umg (Universal Music) and umpg combined account for about 30% of popular music on the platform, and less elsewhere."
There is no doubt that Universal Music’s power as the world’s largest music copyright holder is huge. According to ifpi’s recently released list of the top 10 best-selling artists in the world in 2023, taylor swift, seventeen, stray kids, drake, the weeknd, morgan Wallen, Tomorrow
It can be said that Universal Music undoubtedly controls most of the copyrights of popular music in the global music scene. Relevant data from
shows that the decline in the 3 million songs that Universal Music previously owned the recording copyright has had a certain impact on TikTok. During Universal Music Group’s earnings call at the end of last month, Michael Nash, executive vice president and chief digital officer of Universal Music, cited data from Apptopia, indicating that the total time users spent on TikTok in late February dropped slightly from the same period last year.
In addition, not only musicians and the platform itself have been affected to a certain extent, but the copyright removal operation has also forced a large number of tiktok bloggers and ordinary users to "mute" the videos they publish.
After all, even if a musician/songwriter under Universal Music participates in a small part of a certain song, there is still the possibility that the entire song will be removed from the shelves. This also involves the cooperation of other artists such as Sony Music and Warner Music. The repertoire has put many TikTok creators at risk of their past videos, especially their masterpieces, being removed from the shelves.
For example, TikTok blogger Sophia Romano, who recently used "Fluffing a Duck" to oppose Universal Music's removal of copyright, mentioned in an interview with Bi that replacing past videos with other music may not necessarily be suitable, and she must also reconsider some of the past videos. Well-designed video creativity, "I think 75% of videos will contain songs from Universal Music. It has so many talented and well-known musicians. It's not only difficult to incorporate the people and music you like into the video, but It’s also sad.”
In this platform war, the stakes and costs for Universal Music and TikTok are huge. The fight between gods and gods has affected Chiyu, and musicians and TikTok users have also become direct victims.
Without Universal Music, how can TikTok save itself?
With the copyright war between the two giants, an insider from TikTok told Variety that in the past month, even though Universal Music has successively removed its copyrights from the shelves, TikTok users have not decreased.
Interestingly, Music Herald noticed that many tiktok creators were dissatisfied with Universal Music's approach due to the lack of popular songs. Among them, after blogger niana guerrero released an original dance video using "flutting a duck" as BGM to satirize Universal Music, this hilarious video not only received more than 14 million likes and 104.7 million views, but also Kevin Macleod's "Fluffing a Duck", released in 2014, set off a craze on TikTok and became a hot hit right now.
The taylor swift remix video with "fluffing a duck" as bgmt produced by "w4ybright", a taylor swift fan blogger with more than 500,000 fans on tiktok, was also widely circulated in a joking atmosphere, and was regarded as Hitting back at Universal Music's 'mute' protest.
Under the influence of "Fluffing a Duck", more and more tiktok bloggers, especially those in the dance area, began to seek to "save themselves" through other BGM in order to retain their existing fan traffic. Dancer and content creator blogger Lars Gummer said in an interview with "Daily Beast", "We are angry about the decision between Universal Music and TikTok," but most creators like him have also begun to look for new ideas. creative bgm.
On the one hand, in addition to the widespread release of short videos featuring silent dancing, silent lip-syncing, etc. without original music BGM, there has also been a craze that has led to instrumental adaptations, free music, classical music, "meme-oriented" a cappella adaptations, etc. becoming current popular trends; On the other hand, works by Warner Music, Sony Music and independent musicians are also used more frequently.
For example, tiktok blogger Wendyskin used a clip of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" singing acapella with her boyfriend as the BGM of her trip to Japan. She wrote in the title, "When we had to sing this song, Universal Music put this The song was taken away”.
is more like blogger niana guerrero, who is looking for free music as BGM. This has also prompted more and more free songs to become popular on TikTok, and has also spawned more and more diverse and even spoof remix BGM. For example, the Nintendo game "wii music" has become a new favorite for TikTok users to fill in the missing music library because it is free to use; there are even TikTok users who produce "own versions" of Universal Music's music works for the site. The "edging" behavior used by users.
For example, blogger stephanie created a performance of Taylor Swift's classic song "out of the woods" using a combination of frying pans, toys, a cappella singing and various special effects sounds. The video has been viewed more than 600,000 times. Not only that, but Taylor Swift's representative works such as "Anti-Hero" and "Cruel Summer" have also been adapted by Stephanie in the form of second creations.
In addition, many independent musicians who are active on TikTok and musicians who are not from the three major recording systems believe that this change may be an opportunity for them. For example, rapper Ktlyn, who has more than 2.4 million fans on TikTok and averages 5 million monthly listens on Spotify, pointed out, "This is an opportunity for independent musicians."
Many independent musicians have also taken advantage of the trend to gain traffic, using the tags "indieartist" and "umg" in combination to gain users' attention. For example, independent musician Shane Niemi, who became popular on TikTok with "Maybe My Soulmate Died" and received more than 97 million streams on Spotify, uploaded his music to TikTok after Universal Music issued a copyright removal statement, and The title mentioned "You need tiktok music because Universal Music has lost your favorites."
However, it is worth noting that although Universal Music has removed the copyright of the original songs of its works, the modified versions, spoofs or cover music clips that have been processed by the second generation can still be used on TikTok. and these processed versions also escape automatic detection and deletion to a certain extent, making TikTok’s piracy economy equally fierce.
TikTok has the most modified audio of all major UGC platforms, including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a new study from monitoring and analytics digital service PEX. pex estimates that as of 2023, more than a third (38.03%) of all songs found on TikTok will have been modified for tempo or pitch. Not only that, PEX also pointed out that the proportion of modified tracks on TikTok will increase from 24.55% in 2022 to 38.03% in 2023, continuing to increase.
It can be seen that it is not enough for Universal Music to just remove the copyright of the original music. If piracy is allowed to run rampant, the losses will be even greater. It will undoubtedly lose the wife and lose the army.
Furthermore, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has been making plans in the field of AI music. After acquiring jukedeck in July 2019, it has successively launched the machine learning-driven music production application mawf, the music creation application "Sponge Band", and music creation Tool ripple. Copyright giants led by Universal Music are all aware of this series of actions that may reduce the copyright share of human artists, but there is no good way to stop it. Now they can only start with the distribution of profits.
It is undeniable that Universal Music has indeed lost the most powerful platform it has today to promote its music, as well as any royalties and derivative revenue streams that would have been generated on this platform. In the short term, the problems facing Universal Music will be more serious than TikTok, which can still save itself after losing its copyright.After all, as mrc data shows, TikTok has become a platform for 75% of users to discover new musicians in 2021.
But in the long run, it is a good thing for creators that Universal Music and TikTok will be tough, as they can gain a larger share of future revenue by taking a tougher stance. Because of this, Universal Music has also received support from some record companies. Dr. Richard James Buress, the president and CEO of
a2im, publicly stated that the folly of the music industry is that the basic income of recorded music is sacrificed for the sake of promotion, exposure or discoverability: “Music does a lot for the platform’s user growth and user engagement. However, the music industry has not received a fair financial return for this investment. In an industry that pays artists and record labels systemically low wages, TikTok’s payment method has a unique disadvantage."
Conclusion
The battle between Universal Music and TikTok will ultimately end in a lose-lose situation for both parties.
This reminds people that as early as the millennium, YouTube and Warner Music also had similar disputes. Warner Music also deleted and "muted" its music works from YouTube for several months, and finally ended in reconciliation. Interestingly, after the conflict between TikTok and Universal Music became public, YouTube launched a function that allows users to add and create remixed music videos. This move was also seen as a public challenge to TikTok and attracted users to migrate.
But in the final analysis, even if it seems that TikTok still has a way to make up for the missing copyright, listing Universal Music copyright must be one of the main tasks in the later period.
After all, TikTok still has to face how to provide users with the content they need, and Universal Music copyright, which holds a large number of popular copyrights, is still an urgent need for users. And this also means that there are no eternal enemies. When the interests coincide and the conditions are agreed, reconciliation is just a matter of sooner or later, and the copyright can only be slowly returned.
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