UMPG terminates TikTok licensing agreement

Photo Credit: UMPG

Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) says it has terminated its licensing agreement with TikTok. As the largest music publisher this will have serious repercussions for TikTok.

UMPG says the terms of its relationship are set by a contract which expires on January 31, 2024. “In our contract renewal discussions, we have been pressing them on three critical issues—appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters, protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok’s users,” UMPG says.

“With respect to the issue of artist and songwriter compensation, TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms play,” UMPG continues. “Today, as an indication of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenues and increasing reliance on music-based content, TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue.”

UMPG says TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for its music. But it also delved into concerns expressed about the rapid deployment of AI and scraping data for large-language models to process and parse.

“TikTok is allowing the platform to be flooded with AI-generated recordings, as well as developing tools to enable, promote, and encourage AI music creation on the platform itself—and then demanding a contractual right which would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists,” UMPG says. “[This] move is nothing short of sponsoring artist replacement by AI.”

The music publisher also highlights the issue it has with TikTok’s ability to moderate content on its platform. It says TikTok has offered “no meaningful solutions” to the rising tide of “content adjaency issues” or content appearing next to hate speech, bigotry, bullying, and harassment.

“The only means available to seek the removal of infringing or problematic content (such as pornographic deepfakes of artists) is through the monumentally cumbersome and inefficient process which equates to the digital equivalent of Whack-a-Mole.”

You can read the full open letter UMPG provided to its artists and songwriters.