TikTok Begins Removing Universal Music Publishing Songs, Expanding Royalty Battle

In January, Universal Orlando shared the first official “look” inside its highly anticipated new theme park, Universal Epic Universe, a development that the company expects to be a game changer.

Aspyr has admitted a series of “critical errors” impacted the launch of the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection.Originally announced last month, the Classic Collection brought together the first two Star Wars Battlefront games for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series.Alongside the base games, the package included a number of bonus levels and characters as well as an online multiplayer mode that was advertised as allowing up to 64 players to take part in challenges like conquest, capture the flag, hunt, hero assault, and space assault.However, when Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection launched yesterday (March 14), players found themselves facing a number of bugs and glitches, alongside a seemingly tiny number of servers available for multiplayer. Currently the game has an “overwhelmingly negative” rating on Steam, with just 19 per cent of players leaving a positive review due to the issues.In a statement, Aspyr wrote: “We’d like to thank the Battlefront community for their overwhelming support and feedback for the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection release.

TikTok is mourning a young star.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The standoff between Universal Music Groupand TikTok over royalty payments and AI policies has resulted in a near-complete blackout of all music owned, distributed and published by the company on the platform — the videos are still there, but the music is muted. Yet new songs by UMG artists, including Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello and Niall Horan could be found on TikTok at the time of this article’s publication. How and why is that happening? While reps for UMG and TikTok declined comment, and an explanation of the platform’s logistics and process quickly devolves into a mind-melting blizzard of jargon and abbreviations, here’s a vast oversimplification of a couple of possibilities.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As the vast reorganization of Universal Music Group’s labels continues, as expected, the company’s East Coast operations are uniting under the Republic Corps umbrella. The move reflects the company’s reorganization of its labels under the domains of Republic’s Monte Lipman (East Coast) and Interscope’s John Janick (West Coast).

Young TikTok star Leah Smith, who inspired hundreds of thousands of people by sharing her battle with a rare form of cancer, has sadly passed away at the age of 22, and her boyfriend Andrew shared a moving video tribute as he announced the news of her passing. Leah, from Woolton, Merseyside, was battling Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare type of cancer that affects bones and soft tissues.This disease mostly impacts children and young adults, with most cases being diagnosed in people aged between 10 and 20. In an emotional video tribute, Andrew confirmed that Leah had sadly passed away on Monday, 11 March, saying: "This is just a message to anyone that's followed Leah or gave her any support or any nice comments.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As the standoff between Universal Music Group and TikTok over royalties, AI and other matters continues to boil amid angry words from both sides — and the National Music Publishers Assn. stating last weekthat it does not plan to renew its license with the platform — the official trade group for independent publishers has weighed in with its own advice.

Roxy Music‘s frontman Bryan Ferry has sold 50 per cent of his music catalogue in a deal with Iconic Artist Group.The deal includes a range of assets from Ferry’s music career including his solo work as well as the work from his time with Roxy Music. Iconic Artists Group also acquired half of the singer’s sound recording, publishing, and name, image and likeness rights.

Jonathan Taplin Jonathan Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the author of “The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto.” He was tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band in 1969. He has written this op-ed at the request of Universal Music Group. On Monday, these pages featured a defense of TikTok that could easily have been ripped from the headlines of the 2000’s.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The standoff between Universal Music Group and TikTok took another turn on Wednesday when the trade group National Music Publishers Association sent a letter to its members saying that it does not expect to renew its license with the China-based platform when it expires at the end of next month. “Recently, the press has highlighted concerns around TikTok’s licensing practices, concerns that NMPA has heard directly from many of our members,” the letter reads in part.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Veteran singer and Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry has entered into a partnership with Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group “to develop and expand the renowned artist’s musical legacy to new generations of fans,” according to the announcement. The deal sees the company acquiring 50% of Ferry’s sound recording, publishing, and name, image and likeness rights from his solo work and Roxy Music catalog, which reaches back to the group’s galvanizing 1972 debut album and includes such hit songs as “Love Is the Drug,” “More Than This,” “Avalon,” “Virginia Plain,” “Dance Away,” “Slave to Love” and more.

Ari Herstand By now, it’s widely known that Universal Music Group has removed most or all of its catalog from TikTok, as well as apparently every song that includes at least one songwriter affiliated Universal Music Publishing Group. It’s a battle that pits the world’s largest music company against the most influential and powerful platform for promoting music — which for the past five years has been TikTok.

UPDATE: As expected, layoffs commenced today at Universal Music Group, which includes Interscope, Republic, Capitol, Def Jam and Island, as well as catalog division Universal Music Enterprises and UMG corporate. 

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As expected, layoffs began hitting Universal Music Group almost immediately after the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. The moves, which have been signaled by chairman-CEO Lucian Grainge since last fall, were still evolving at the time of this article’s publication, and follow the broad consolidation of the company’s labels under Interscope (West Coast) and Republic (East Coast) groups, under CEOs John Janick and Monte Lipman, respectively.

David Israelite Guest Columnist David Israelite is the president & CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners. Variety welcomes responsible commentary, please send ideas to [email protected]. Songwriters have always struggled to be treated fairly.

New York Dolls’ David Johansen, John Lyon and more.The lawsuit was in an effort to regain control of the artists’ masters, and has finally come to a settlement after years of closely-watched class-action litigation against major record labels over copyright law’s termination right.Announced in court papers last week, the agreement between the music label and the musicians will resolve a case which saw artists accuse Sony of unfairly rejecting their efforts to invoke termination – a federal law that’s supposed to let authors take back control of their works decades after they sold them away.Per Reuters, Johansen, Lyon and Paul Collins sued Sony Music back in 2019, accusing the label of barring their termination notices for their music and proceeding to sell it without permission. The case had ben on pause for settlement since 2021.The musicians based their claims off of a part of the Copyrights Act.

A post shared by Cat Janice (@cat.janice)Prior to her death, Cat Janice took to TikTok in January to announce that “cancer has won” and that she would be releasing one final track on her birthday (January 19), titled ‘Dance You Outta My Head’. Additionally, she announced that she had reset all of her music so that proceeds from all tracks go to Loren.Thank you for loving me. Im praying a miracle makes me through this but I think im being called Home.

TikTok has confirmed that it has begun to remove Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) songs from its platform.The app has already removed tracks by artists who are signed to the label and will be doing the same with songwriters. The removal of the UMPG tracks comes three days before the UMPG catalogue becomes unlicensed for use on the social media platform.Per Music Business Worldwide, “Any recording of a song currently available on TikTok that has been co-written by a songwriter signed to Universal Music Publishing will also need to come down in the event of UMPG’s license expiring.According to BBC, TikTok has shared that up to 30 per cent of the platform’s “popular songs” could be lost, with some industry estimates revealing that up to 80 per cent of all music on TikTok could be muted.A short list of UMG artists whose music is expected to vanish from the platform is Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Drake, Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Adele, Coldplay, J Balvin, Post Malone and Sophie Ellis-Bextor – whose 2001 track ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ has gone particularly viral through TikTok following the release of Saltburn.Last month, UMG published an open letter announcing its intention to withdraw music from artists signed to the publisher and label from TikTok.In its statement, UMG announced that its licensing agreement with TikTok expired on January 31 and that negotiations to renew the contract have fallen short.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Universal Music Group has announced a majority investment in the Nigeria-based Afrobeats powerhouse label Mavin Global (Mavin). The label, based in Lagos, is home to such hits as Rema’s “Calm Down” — the Selena Gomez-featuring remix of which was No. 12 on Variety’s 2023 Hitmakers chart and is the most-viewed video on YouTube by an African artists — and other artists including Ayra Starr, Ladipoe, Johnny Drille and more.

The musical version of Mean Girls will be different in a small but meaningful way when you get the chance to view it from the comfort of the your homes.