Universal Music Group remains at loggerheads with TikTok over licensing terms, AI and safety concerns. Now it has the backing of European independent music body Impala on the first of those issues.
The organisation has published a statement this morning summarising its members’ views on TikTok and other ‘moment economy’ services, as well as on the streaming-payout changes being made by Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.
On the former, the chair of Impala’s streaming group Mark Kitcatt, who is also CEO of Everlasting Records and Popstock Distribuciones, outlined the body’s stance.
“As set out in our streaming plan, there is an urgent need to secure fair revenues from these vital services. In line with this, IMPALA supports UMG’s stance on TikTok in relation to valuing music properly,” said Kitcatt.
“The independent community has adopted a similar approach at various points over the years with other services, from MTV to Apple to YouTube,” he continued.
“We also reject arguments equating the use of music on TikTok to promotion. There is a huge value gap that must be addressed but, beyond that, an exciting opportunity to explore new ways of generating and sharing revenues.”
Dan Waite, chair of Impala’s digital committee (and CEO of Better Noise Music) offered a similar take.
“TikTok is at a pivotal moment in terms of renewing their licensing deals where they can show that they value music fairly on their platform. It’s a use of music that needs to be remunerated like any other,” he said.
“The question of promotion isn’t relevant. We wish to see independent labels, rightsholders and artists receive fair pay for usage, and to have terms just as favourable as the largest majors renew their licences on” added Waite.
“Working together to better remunerate labels and artists across the whole industry is key. We urge TikTok and other services to respect this principle across the board.”
TikTok has this morning issued its own statement in response to Impala.
“We value the relationships and the licensing agreements we have with the independent music community across Europe. TikTok has always been a licensed service and we’re proud of the successes that independent artists and businesses have found through our platform,” said its spokesperson.
“Since the start of the year we’ve seen significant global hits from artists from a range of genres and countries, from established stars to those just starting out, and this success continues to grow.”
Alongside its TikTok comments, Impala reiterated its desire for streaming services to work with the independent community to make changes to their new payout models if they are likely to harm independent artists and/or labels.
Spotify’s changes – including stopping paying royalties for tracks with fewer than 1,000 streams in the last year – went into force this week. Impala had already raised concerns about them in December, after they were announced by Spotify.
Impala has also joined a chorus of criticism from independents of Apple Music’s new payouts policy, which gives a boost to catalogues that are available in spatial audio. Indies fear that this will benefit major labels, who are more able to afford the costs of these mixes.
“Impala reiterates the sector’s will to work with services to avoid damaging opportunities for young, developing and niche artists, as well as for deep catalogue and specialist genres, smaller territories and for less dominant languages,” said the organisation this morning.
“Impala calls for any changes in how revenue is allocated to be properly assessed by services in terms of the impact they create over the whole market, in line with Impala’s own proposals. We also call on streaming services to consult and discuss this with their independent licensing partners before the decision is made.”
Impala chair Dario Drastata said that he hoped the recent agreement between indie licensing agency Merlin and Deezer, which saw the former sign up to the latter’s new ‘artist-centric’ payouts, is a sign of progress on this front.
“We believe for example that there are simple solutions for problems with thresholds that can be plugged in and will continue our constructive discussions with services to explore options,” he said.
Examples of thresholds include Spotify’s 1,000-streams-in-the-last-year bar, and Deezer’s policy of ‘double boosting’ in its payout calculations artists who get at least 1,000 monthly streams from at least 500 unique listeners – but thus penalising musicians who don’t reach that threshold.
[ad_2]