THE BIZ RESPONDS TO TIK TOK TUSSLE

Industry heavy hitters such as Primary Wave Music, NMPA and Hipgnosis Song Management chairman Merck Mercuriadis are throwing their support behind Universal Music Group's decision to remove its music from TikTok due to a dispute over a new licensing deal.

"The notion that TikTok would try to rationalize willfully underpaying artists because, the platform says, it offers artists 'promotion' is a decades-old canard that has no place in any modern music business," says Primary Wave founder/CEO Larry Mestel (pictured), referencing TikTok's position on the UMG move. The company represents a number of artists, catalogs and estates in business with UMG, including those of Bob Marley and Smokey Robinson.

"Artists and songwriters need to be compensated appropriately for their work and protected from unethical uses of AI. Period." he continues. "We're proud to stand alongside UMG and the artist advocates that have called upon TikTok to appropriately pay and protect the songwriters and artists who are critical to the growth and cultural relevance of the platform."

"Music is a driving force behind TikTok’s success and it is extremely unfortunate that TikTok does not seem to value the music creators that fuel its business," reads a statement from NMPA president/CEO David Israelite in solidarity with UMG's decision. "We believe songwriters should be valued and compensated fairly, and we believe artificial intelligence should never be used to dilute the value of human creativity. We have seen other social media platforms make the mistake of claiming promotion should substitute for fair compensation. It's a losing argument and it is wrong."

While acknowledging TikTok's ability "to be a great catalyst for the consumption of music" across genres and eras, Mercuriadis said in an interview with Music Business Worldwide, "Universal has done the right thing here, from the perspective of making sure that the '900 pound gorilla' of our business is setting a tone that is not only in the best interest of music rights-owners, but songwriters specifically."

Also weighing in with MBW was Downtown Music Holdings CEO Andrew Bergman, whose company represents more than 4m creators. "We strive at Downtown to ensure that artists, songwriters and rights holders are equitably compensated for their creative endeavors," he said. "Over the last several years, despite the meteoric success of the platform, this has not been the case with TikTok. It's time to recalibrate the partnership between the music industry and TikTok to re-balance the ledger."

UMG began removing music from TikTok 2/1, leaving older videos silent with the note "This sound isn’t available." On official profiles of Universal artists, displays that would have been filled with tracks earlier this week were either bare or offering snippets of songs.

"Our agreements with TikTok have expired because of TikTok’s unwillingness to appropriately compensate artists and songwriters, protect human artists from the harmful effects of AI and address online safety issues for TikTok's users," UMG said.