TikTok, the platform best known as “the app where people dance to music,” is losing a lot of music, and will lose more.
But there may be a backup plan. It's a photo.
In a comprehensive article on the escalating conflict between TikTok and Universal Music Group, the world's largest record label, the Wall Street Journal said:
Since Universal's music was removed, TikTok has been encouraging creators to post photo content, suggesting they will get more likes and comments if they post. “Photo posts receive, on average, 1.9 times more likes and 2.9 times more comments than videos,” said one notice sent to creators on February 12 and seen by The Wall Street Journal. “it is written like this.
The Journal's article comes amid a growing dispute between UMG and TikTok. Earlier this month, Universal asked TikTok to remove songs it owns, resulting in the removal of some of the world's most popular artists, including Taylor Swift, Drake and Bad Bunny. I started to get silent.
Now, the dispute has spread to Universal's music publishing catalog, and songs written even in part by Universal songwriters could be wiped out as well, even if they're songs by artists who record on other labels. There is.
The ban applies to both videos posted by artists themselves and larger user-generated videos that use music in the background.
It's a battle that may last for a while. So TikTok seems to be subtly telling creators to spend less time worrying about videos and more time creating photo slideshows.
This is not a new proposal. A TikTok representative said the company has been promoting photo posting since spring 2023 and that the campaign has nothing to do with the UMG controversy. But now it's even more resonant.
Here are some thoughts on this:
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This is a reminder that, like other major platforms, TikTok can use a variety of carrots and sticks to push and pull users to create certain types of content. See horizontal video and shopping video.So, if it is Really would like to encourage more photo slideshows, and it's definitely possible.
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I've seen quite a few photo posts lately, but I'm not sure if the popularity has skyrocketed.However, many of those posts There's also music. Therefore, if creators cannot use the music they want as music, I think creators will lose interest in it.
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Articles like the one you're reading right now focus on the fact that TikTok is making the music of some of the most famous people in the world inaccessible, but I'm not sure how important that music really is to TikTok users. I would like to know. Because in my experience with TikTok, I often hear music that isn't from big artists, but in fact from artists that users have only discovered and used via unidentifiable and unexplained TikTok memes. Like this song, it's a song by his indie band called The King Khan & BBQ Show. This song was released in his 2004 year and in 2022 he randomly spread it on TikTok. Presumably, this song is not influenced by his UMG battle.
February 28, 2024 — This story was updated with a comment from TikTok.
