- Millions of songs from artists such as Billie Eilish will now be available again soon on TikTok
- TikTok and Universal had been in dispute over royalty payments, leading to songs being taken down
- Agreement has been reached that will see artists receive better payment for use of their songs on TikTok
Great news for TikTok users – the Universal Group Music catalogue is coming back to the platform after the two resolved their long-running dispute about royalty payments.
This means that about three million songs will be available again for users to make videos with, including from global stars such as Billie Eilish.
On January 31, TikTok silenced about three million songs by artists signed to the Universal Music Group label – including Taylor Swift, although she later negotiated her own deal for her music to return to TikTok – after talks between the two over copyright payments ended as TikTok only wanted to pay a small amount of the rate that other social media sites do for access to Universal’s huge catalogue of music, according to the publisher.
But now, the two sides have come to an agreement, with an announcement that there will be improved remuneration for artists who have videos used on TikTok – although no details of how big an improvement it is have been made public.
Now this has been agreed, Universal’s music should be back on TikTok within a couple of weeks, and this will include restoring songs to videos that have been muted since January 31.
This will be welcome news for creators, who often add songs to their clips, and it has become a useful way for artists to promote their songs to a wide audience. Indeed, there is even a TikTok Billboard top 50 chart, which is based on the level of user engagement on the platform.
