NEW YORK — Cheeky dance videos on TikTok just got a lot more awkward. Universal Music, the US$54 billion (S$72.6 billion) company behind more than a third of the market including pop sensation Taylor Swift and rapper Bad Bunny, pulled its dominant catalog from the social-media app after the two companies failed to reach an agreement on a new licencing contract. The silence will be deafening.
Bad publicity at Sunday’s Grammy Awards should provide a fresh spark for the talks. Host Trevor Noah called out TikTok for “ripping off artists”, joking that that was Spotify’s job. The zinger echoes Universal’s own complaint in an open letter that TikTok is not willing to compensate artists fairly when their songs are used as backing tracks on user-generated clips.
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