On Tuesday, Jan. 10, Universal Music Group accused the media platform TikTok of providing insufficient compensation for music and permitting AI-generated recordings on its platform.

After the announcement, TikTok users noticed that some videos no longer played the attached audios and had a statement at the bottom of the video that stated, “Sound removed due to copyright restrictions.”

Due to this accusation, TikTok announced the following Thursday that they removed all music from Universal Music Group, including deleting artists from their musical library.

UMG is the largest major record company. They release music from artists such as Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and many others.

Many of the public listens to the artists under UMG, and TikTok is one of the main social platforms that uses their songs. Whether the songs are used for a get ready with me or edits for certain fandoms, the songs were reaching broader audiences.

Junior Ce’Leah Myers says, “Most of the music I love came from edits from TikTok. Even if it was just a sample of a song, if I liked it enough, I would just type in the lyrics into YouTube to find it.”

With the music no longer being available, users of TikTok are having to find different sounds that match their content or produce their own.

Some creators have even gone as far as making parodies of the UMG artists’ songs so their audience can get the hint of what the sound of a video was originally supposed to be. Other creators are also starting to use royalty free music.

Local content creator, Larry Campbell is one of the many creators who has had to use an alternative when it came to his clips.

“I usually like to make clips of my daily life, especially when at a coffee shop or someplace aesthetically pleasing. When I post on TikTok I usually do a Taylor Swift song cause it’s more appealing to the ladies and Taylor’s pretty popular. Since they took her music down I’ve just been using some coffee shop sounds, but it’s not as good as actual music,” says Campbell.

Although the music of UMG has been taken down, this new change may allow more undiscovered artists to become more recognized in the media. Especially now because the trends of TikTok have or will start to decline.

As of now, there have been no hints on whether UMG and TikTok will agree to allow the music back onto the platform.

Written by Jasmine Hightower, Entertainment Editor.  Photo courtesy of MGN.