TikTok users are still caught in a fight between Universal Music Group and TikTok. But the musicians themselves aren’t standing still, with some of them adding new Grammy Awards to their trophy case on Feb. 4. That’s a positive ending to a week where many users woke up on Feb. 1 to discover the music from videos they made or watched had been removed due to a dispute between UMG and the video-sharing social media platform.Â
Videos were muted, even if only a few seconds of the song by the UMG artist was included, and UMG music is no longer available for use in new videos.Â
Huge stars are involved in the dispute with TikTok — 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. Swift and Eilish were among those presented with Grammy Awards on Feb. 4, and Grammy host Trevor Noah even joked about the feud in his introductory monologue.
“The Grammys has everyone, unlike TikTok!” Noah said at the awards show. “You saw that, right? Universal has just pulled all of their artists off TikTok … And you know what, TikTok? Shame on you! Shame on you for ripping off all of these artists, yeah! … How dare you do that? That’s Spotify’s job.”
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…
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