Olivia Rodrigo performs in live performance throughout a taping of the “Austin Metropolis Limits” TV present at ACL Stay on Oct. 2, 2021, in Austin, Texas.

Amy Harris/Invision/AP

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Amy Harris/Invision/AP

Olivia Rodrigo performs in live performance throughout a taping of the “Austin Metropolis Limits” TV present at ACL Stay on Oct. 2, 2021, in Austin, Texas.

Amy Harris/Invision/AP

TikTok says it has eliminated all music by artists licensed to Common Music Group, together with Taylor Swift, BTS, Drake and Olivia Rodrigo.

“We began the removing late final evening Pacific Time, Jan thirty first, as we approached the deadline of the [UMG/TikTok] license expiration,” a TikTok spokesperson instructed NPR in an electronic mail.

Along with removing of music, “movies containing music licensed by Common have been muted.”

In an open letter, UMG argued, amongst different issues, that TikTok wasn’t compensating its artists pretty and allowed the platform “to be flooded with AI-generated recordings—in addition to growing instruments to allow, promote and encourage AI music creation on the platform itself.” You possibly can learn UMG’s full letter right here.

As UMG factors out, TikTok’s colossal success “has been constructed largely on the music created” by artists and songwriters. In flip, rising artists have used the platform to launch their careers.

A minimum of one UMG artist is not glad his songs have been eliminated. In a video posted to the platform, Grammy nominee Noah Kahan says, “I will not have the ability to promote my music on TikTok anymore. However fortunately I am not a TikTok artist, proper?”

Kahan is signed to Republic Data, a subsidiary of UMG, however credit TikTok together with his success. Followers on the platform turned excerpts of his songs into viral sensations. Kahan is nominated within the Greatest New Artist class at this yr’s Grammys.

Main as much as Jan. 31, when their contract expired, negotiations between social media large TikTok and the world’s largest music firm had intensified as they labored to hammer out a brand new one, Tatiana Cirisano, a music business analyst at Midia Analysis instructed NPR.

“UMG is sort of taking the nuclear choice of eradicating all their music and making an attempt to show … that TikTok could not exist if it did not have their catalog,” she stated.

Early Wednesday morning, UMG launched what it known as “An Open Letter to the Artist And Songwriter Group – Why We Should Name Time Out On TikTok.” The letter, one suspects, is definitely for music followers and tech watchdogs as properly.

“In our contract renewal discussions, we’ve been urgent them on three crucial points,” the letter says of TikTok, noting the problems embody safety towards AI-generated recordings, on-line issues of safety for customers and better compensation for its artists and songwriters.

“With respect to the difficulty of artist and songwriter compensation,” the letter continues, “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a charge that could be a fraction of the speed that equally located main social platforms pay. At present, as a sign of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, regardless of its large and rising consumer base, quickly rising promoting income and growing reliance on music-based content material, TikTok accounts for less than about 1% of our complete income. Finally TikTok is making an attempt to construct a music-based enterprise, with out paying truthful worth for the music.”

Compensation is the large sticking level right here, Cirisano stated. “I might additionally level out that that is most likely going to do extra for Common Music Group as an organization than it’s for any of their particular person artists and songwriters,” she says.

In a press release on social media, TikTok accused UMG of selling “false narratives and rhetoric” and of placing “greed above the pursuits of their artist and songwriter.”