PETITION: Tell lawmakers to investigate UMG and TikTok for screwing over artists
A truly unfathomable number of songs have been taken down from Tiktok, as two corporations battle it out over who can rake in more profits at the expense of artists. TikTok and Universal Music Group are fighting over money for their shareholders. Meanwhile, musicians, creators, and fans are all losing out. It’s time for lawmakers to step in.
While your favorite edit or a video of your cat being muted might seem trivial to make a fuss about, it’s actually about much more than that. Going all the way back to Napster, our eagerness to share and celebrate the music we love has been deplatformed or even punished by giant corporations. And musicians are getting paid less and less for their songs.
We don’t want to be complicit with this abusive system anymore. That’s why we’re calling on lawmakers to stop this vicious cycle. Congress has the power to investigate companies if they’re engaging in anti-competitive practices. They should investigate UMG and TikTok. Whether we’re musicians or TikTok stars or just some guy, we deserve to make the art that we want to make without fear of it being censored or banned.
In theory, musicians give their music rights to UMG so that they can make more money and get more popular. But unless you’re Katy Perry or Olivia Rodrigo, that isn’t working.
Licensing agreements like the one TikTok and UMG are fighting about are the problem, because they lump all musicians into one pile and give the most money to the ultra-privileged. Same as the licensing agreements that let Spotify charge you for music and then pay the up-and-coming musicians you listen to nothing. UMG are even investors in Spotify—less money for musicians actually means more money for them.
And now UMG has censored the music of hundreds of musicians on the most musically viral social media platform. The musicians didn’t choose this. This giant corporation that owns the rights to their music did.
Corporations like UMG shouldn’t be able to own those rights anymore, if they aren’t going to act in the best interests of musicians.
Musicians need to be able to negotiate for themselves. They need the information and power to directly hold TikTok accountable for not paying musicians enough, and they need to be able to choose a better way when big labels like UMG betray them.
We call on lawmakers to investigate UMG and TikTok. It’s time for lawmakers to acknowledge the broken and abusive deal that musicians and creators of all stripes are getting in the era of licensing, and give giant corporations real consequences for failing the artists that make them powerful.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned