ICYMI - Was TikTok Silent or Silenced?
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2024
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Candice Lim is joined by culture critic and reporter Cyrena Touros to break down the battle between Universal Music Group and TikTok. On February 1, UMG started pulling their artists’ music from TikTok after their licensing contract expired. This meant creators weren’t able to interact with music from artists like Taylor Swift, Drake and Olivia Rodrigo. UMG claims this drastic move was necessary to ensure appropriate compensation for their artists and songwriters. But TikTok fired back, saying UMG was putting “their own greed above” the interests of UMG’s artists because TikTok is a free marketing and discovery platform for their talent. So who’s the real villain here and how will musicians and creators cope during this battle?
This podcast is produced by Se’era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim and Rachelle Hampton.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, I'm Candice Lib, and you're listening to Icy Y-M-I, in case you missed it, |
| 0:18.0 | Sleyts Podcast about Internet Culture. |
| 0:20.5 | I was so happy to see Victoria Monet win three Grammys this week. |
| 0:25.0 | If you have been there since the Monopoly days, |
| 0:28.0 | the Jaguar EP days, this felt good. |
| 0:32.0 | And Trevor Noah did not flop as a host which makes me wonder if the |
| 0:35.9 | Grammys were like the best award show of the year so far I mean I don't know if |
| 0:41.4 | the Oscars can beat it unless Ryan Gosling gets on that stage to |
| 0:46.1 | saying I'm just Ken with like a special appearance by Nick Jonas or something. |
| 0:50.7 | I mean Jimmy Kimmel, make it happen. |
| 0:54.0 | So if you've been on Tik-Tok lately, you might have noticed that it's kind of quiet over there. |
| 1:00.0 | And that's because on January 31st, Universal Music Group's contract with Tik-Toc expired. |
| 1:06.0 | So on February 1st, UmG started pulling their catalog from the platform. |
| 1:11.0 | And this includes songs from people like Taylor Swift, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo, |
| 1:16.8 | along with smaller artists who were hoping to use Tik-Tok to get their big break. |
| 1:21.3 | And it just makes the Tik-Tok experience awkward and annoying because |
| 1:26.7 | you'll go to like an Olivia Rodrigo Tik-Tok and it's her lip-sinking to perhaps her own song but you don't know because the audio was |
| 1:33.9 | muted and then you click on the little sound tag and it says the sound isn't |
| 1:37.8 | available or sound removed due to copyright restrictions and this is one thing for artists, but Tik-Tok creators are also going through |
| 1:46.1 | their backlog and seeing some of their most viral posts just become, them, awkwardly dancing with no backing track? |
| 1:54.0 | Now, Tik-Toc creators have been trying to get around this |
| 1:57.8 | by using sped up versions of their favorite songs, |
... |
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