TikTok has proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay. Today, as an indication of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its immense and growing user base, rapidly increasing advertising revenue, and increasing reliance on music-based content, TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue.
Ultimately, TikTok is trying to build a business based on music without paying fair value for music.
As for AI, 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 that would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that amounts to nothing less than sponsoring the replacement of artists by AI.
Furthermore, TikTok makes little effort to deal with the vast azerbaijan number data amount of content on its platform that infringes on our artists’ music and has offered no meaningful solutions to the rising tide of content adjacency issues, let alone the surge of hate speech, bigotry, harassment, and bullying on the platform. The only way to seek removal of infringing or problematic content (such as pornographic deepfakes of artists ) is through a hugely cumbersome and inefficient process that amounts to the digital equivalent of the children’s game “Whack-a-Mole.”
But when we proposed that TikTok take similar steps as our other platform partners to address these issues, it responded first with indifference and then with intimidation.
As our negotiations continued, TikTok attempted to bully us into accepting a deal worth less than the prior deal, far less than fair market value and not reflective of its exponential growth .
Who will lose more from this decision? TikTok, Universal Music Group or the artists?