TikTok sounds a little different this week. On Feb. 1, many users woke up to discover the music from videos they made or watched had been removed due to a dispute between TikTok and Universal Music Group. Those videos were muted, even if only a few seconds of the song by the UMG artist was included, and UMG music was no longer available for use in new videos.Â
Huge stars are involved in the dispute with the video-sharing social media app — UMG artists include Taylor Swift, the Beatles, Billie Eilish, Drake, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny and many more. You can see the full list of artists on UMG’s site. TikTok is a massive social platform and music app, with more than a billion users worldwide, and more than 100 million in the US. And the site is no stranger to controversy, thanks in part to the fact that its parent company, Bytedance, is Chinese. US lawmakers say Chinese laws allow China’s government to demand data from companies based there, though TikTok says such fears are unfounded. Still, the federal government, and some states, have banned its use on government or state devices.
TikTok creators can make videos using music accessed via the site’s library. Millions of TikTok videos use those sounds. According to Forbes, Taylor Swift’s song Cruel Summer alone had been used in almost 2.5 million videos. Here’s what you should know about the dispute, and how to swap in other music if your videos have been affected.
What happened to the videos?
Videos that TikTok creators had previously made using then-allowed artists were still on the site Thursday. But they were marked with a note indicating that the music was no longer available. Sound for the entire video was muted, even if the affected artist’s music was used only briefly. The videos could still be watched, but on a site where dancing and lip-syncing are a huge part of the content, those videos are essentially useless without any sound.
The change is worldwide, not just affecting TikTok videos made in certain…
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