👉 Background: TikTok is the trend-setting, algorithm-hooking app that has over 1 billion monthly active users. When a song goes viral on TikTok, it generally goes viral on the music charts too.

👉 What happened: Now, Universal Music Group (UMG), the label behind Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and The Weeknd will reportedly pull all of its artists' music from TikTok after their licencing agreement ended on January 31st. UMG claims that TikTok was only willing to pay their artists a "fraction of the rate" of other major social media platforms.

👉 What else: But TikTok has bitten back in a war of words. The Tok claims that Universal is "greedy" and is pushing a "false narrative and rhetoric". Shots have been fired - but sadly, there are no winners here.

What's the key learning?

💡Despite their differences, the future of both TikTok and Universal is largely interlinked. In fact, they actually depend on one another for success.

💡Despite artists not making significant royalties via TikTok, they're able to gain exposure for other revenue-generating activities. For example, Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer" song was used in 2.4 million TikTok posts. And then, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 four years after its release.

💡TikTok also depends on popular songs for engagement. When TikTok temporarily limited music access from three major record labels in Australia last year to see how it would affect user engagement, the number of users and time spent on the platform declined three weeks in a row. So it may be time for TikTok and Universal to kiss and make up.

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