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Pop star Swift: “Replacing artists with AI”
Photo: Michael Tran / AFP
The world's largest music company, Universal Music, has begun withdrawing songs by its artists from the video app TikTok in a dispute over royalties. On Thursday, music by Taylor Swift and Drake, among others, no longer appeared in searches.
TikTok allows users to add songs to their videos and enters into licensing agreements with the music industry. However, Universal Music declared this week that negotiations to extend the previous agreement had failed. It expired on Wednesday.
Universal Music argued in an open letter that TikTok only offered musicians and song authors a “fraction” of the remuneration usual on other similar online platforms. TikTok is also allowing music created on a large scale using artificial intelligence onto the platform - and wants contractual freedom for this. In this way, the service is actually driving forward “the replacement of artists with AI”.
TikTok countered that Universal Music had “put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” The music company is thus staying away from a platform with “significantly more than a billion users” on which music is advertised and discovered. Universal Music is not acting in the interests of musicians and fans.
Universal Music's exit could leave TikTok with dissatisfied users. Many videos on the platform have musical accompaniment, and the group has many of the world's most popular musicians under contract. Universal Music admitted that the move would have consequences for its own musicians. However, we have a responsibility to fight for fair conditions for them.
TikTok is the only successful online platform in the West that does not come from the USA. The service belongs to the ByteDance group, which comes from China. However, the company always emphasizes that it does not see itself as a subsidiary of a Chinese company. ByteDance is 60 percent owned by Western investors. The company headquarters are on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. Critics counter that the Chinese founders, with a share of 20 percent, maintained control thanks to higher voting rights and that ByteDance has a large headquarters in Beijing.
pbe/dpa