T
he bruising battle over royalties between Universal Music Group and TikTok entered a new and more severe stage in the early hours of Tuesday as songs published by UMG began to be removed from the platform. The standoff, which began earlier this month, initially saw recordings owned or distributed by UMG removed from the platform, but now is extending to a much larger number of songs by including those published by the company.
Source: TikTok Begins Removing Universal Music Publishing Songs, Expanding Royalty Battle
European independent-music body Impala is weighing in to the row over Apple Music’s plans to give music catalogues that are available as spatial audio a boost in its royalties calculations. “The boost in royalties, as already highlighted in the press, is less accessible to independents,” claimed Impala in a statement this morning. Impala wants Apple to “discuss alternative ways, rather than unilaterally introducing significant changes, resulting in the redirection of revenues from independents to be redistributed among the major players”.
Social media platform Reddit has struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant’s artificial intelligence models, three people familiar with the matter said. The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources. Bloomberg previously reported Reddit’s content deal without naming the buyer.
AI tech is being used to appropriate and profit off of major Black artists in music (like Drake, The Weeknd & Beyoncé) leaving many to wonder if this is where the industry’s future is headed and if Black creators will even have a place in it. That fear harkens back to the 1950s and 1960s when the music of Black artists like Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton, Chuck Berry, and The Supremes was stolen, whitewashed, and popularized by white acts like Elvis Presley, Phil Collins, The Beach Boys, and Pat Boone.