A new Universal Music-TikTok licensing deal ends the Drake-less “For You Page” era as a US ban looms

The day the music revived… After a three-month blackout, Universal Music Group (the world’s largest music company) reached a new agreement with TikTok, restoring its massive song catalog to the FYP. Since February, songs from UMG artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, and Billie Eilish have been absent from TikTok after a dispute over royalty payments and AI protections. That created problems for artists, many of whom rely on the app for promotion, and users, whose timelines became way too reliant on that Joe Keery “End of Beginning” (aka “Back in Chicago”) song.

• Deal-tails: UMG said it had secured better royalty payments for artists. TikTok makes $18B in ad rev, but reportedly pays just $400M/year in music royalties. AI protections were also established.

• Swift turnaround: The holdout appears to have lost steam after Taylor Swift (UMG’s biggest artist) returned her tunes to the app ahead of her album “The Tortured Poets Department” through a separate deal last month.

• Awkward timing: Last week, President Biden signed into law a bill that would force TikTok parent ByteDance to sell the app within nine months or be banned in the US. 

Struggling to keep the beat… Despite both TikTok and UMG separately implying the blackout didn’t particularly affect business during the feud, the app has become a vital discoverability tool (with record labels even tailoring songs to be Tok-friendly). The music biz has struggled to keep up on the compensation side. Warner Music reached a new multiyear deal with the app last year, but Sony Music hasn’t ruled out following UMG’s lead with a blackout for better royalties (and in the past has pulled its catalog from ByteDance-owned Resso).