Common Music is about to drag its songs from TikTok after a breakdown in negotiations over cost, which might take away the social media platform’s entry to music from stars comparable to Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, and Drake.
Common, the trade big that controls a 3rd of the world’s music, has been in tense negotiations with Beijing-based TikTok for the previous yr, in line with folks accustomed to the matter.
Common on Tuesday accused TikTok of “bullying” and mentioned the corporate wished to pay a “fraction” of the speed that different social media websites pay for entry to its music catalog. Because of this, Common mentioned it could cease licensing its content material to TikTok when its contract expires on January 31.
The massive music corporations earn billions of {dollars} a yr by means of royalty funds from streaming companies and social media websites together with Spotify, Apple, and Meta. They sometimes renegotiate these contracts each couple of years.
“As our negotiations continued, TikTok tried to bully us into accepting a deal value lower than the earlier deal, far lower than truthful market worth and never reflective of their exponential development,” Common mentioned.
In response, TikTok claimed that Common has “put their very own greed above the pursuits of their artists and songwriters.”
“Regardless of Common’s false narrative and rhetoric, the very fact is that they have chosen to stroll away from the highly effective assist of a platform with effectively over a billion customers that serves as a free promotional and discovery automobile for his or her expertise.”
That is the primary time within the trendy streaming period that Common has gone as far as to take away its music—which incorporates thousands and thousands of songs from lots of the greatest music stars—from a tech firm’s platform. TikTok has soared in recognition as thousands and thousands of individuals add quick clips of themselves on the app, usually lip-syncing to music.
The Monetary Instances reported final month that TikTok’s guardian firm, ByteDance, made $29 billion in revenues within the three months to June 2023, up about 40 p.c from the earlier yr. ByteDance doesn’t publicly disclose its monetary outcomes.
“TikTok’s ways are apparent: use its platform energy to harm weak artists and attempt to intimidate us into conceding to a foul deal that undervalues music and shortchanges artists and songwriters in addition to their followers,” Common mentioned. Income from TikTok makes up simply 1 p.c of Common’s income, it added.
Warner Music, the third-largest file firm, final yr introduced it had struck a brand new cope with TikTok.
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