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Taylor Swift performs throughout her Eras Tour at Allianz Parque in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in November 2023.
London
CNN
—
Common Music Group has pulled its music off TikTok, stopping greater than 1 billion customers of the platform from streaming an enormous catalog of songs by Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Rihanna and different artists.
Common mentioned in a statement that it had determined to not renew its licensing settlement with TikTok, which expires Wednesday, as a result of it couldn’t safe “applicable compensation” for its artists and songwriters. TikTok permits its customers so as to add music to their movies.
TikTok, owned by Chinese language tech firm ByteDance, had proposed paying a “fraction” of the speed that similarly-sized social media platforms pay, Common mentioned.
Like different music corporations, Netherlands-based Common expenses royalty charges when its songs are performed on social media platforms. It additionally owns music by Woman Gaga, Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish, J Balvin and Amy Winehouse.
TikTok responded by saying Common was pushing “false narrative and rhetoric” and accused the corporate of placing “their very own greed above the pursuits of their artists and songwriters.”
“They’ve chosen to stroll away from the highly effective assist of a platform with properly over a billion customers that serves as a free promotional and discovery automobile for his or her expertise,” TikTok mentioned in a statement.
For its half, Common accused TikTok of “attempting to construct a music-based enterprise, with out paying honest worth for the music.”
“As a sign of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, regardless of its huge and rising person base, quickly rising promoting income and rising reliance on music-based content material, TikTok accounts for less than about 1% of our whole income,” the music large mentioned.
Common additionally mentioned it had been urgent TikTok to raised shield musicians from “the dangerous results” of synthetic intelligence and to make sure on-line security for TikTok’s customers.
TikTok is permitting its platform to be “flooded” with AI-generated music, and supplies customers with instruments to create their very own AI-generated recordings, Common mentioned.
When pressed on these points, TikTok has responded with “indifference, after which with intimidation”, in response to Common, by eradicating a few of its up-and-coming artists from the platform, whereas retaining the music of world stars.
In its response, TikTok mentioned it had reached “artist-first” agreements with “each different label and writer.”
Elizabeth Wagmeister contributed to this text.
