In an open letter, TikTok states that they have been unable to reach an agreement with UMG. The music giant says it will pull its entire music catalog from the platform on Jan. 31. Ice Spice announced that her debut album, titled ‘Y2K,’ will be out later this year. SZA has confirmed that a collaboration with Paramore is in the works. Adele will perform four shows in Germany this summer. Taylor Swift tops our Power 100 list. And more!
Tetris Kelly:
Some of your favorite artists are leaving TikTok, updates from Adele, Ice Spice and SZA, Taylor Swift graces the cover of Billboard. We catch up with Grammy nominees, Black Pumas and 6lack runs down his playlist.
Welcome to another episode of Billboard News. I’m Tetris Kelly. It’s Wednesday, January 31st and we’ve got a great episode for you. Let’s kick things off with our top story.
BTS, Taylor Swift, Drake, some of your favorite songs and artists may be missing from TikTok, and it’s all because of a dispute with Universal Music Group. And let us break it down for you. To make this as simple as possible Universal Music Group thinks artists should be making more from their music on TikTok. In a letter, the music giant has accused the wildly popular platform of trying to build a music-based business without paying fair value for the music. Their contract expires today January 31st and UMG houses labels like Republic with artists like Taylor Swift, HYBE and their artists are at UMG so no more Jimin, BTS or NewJeans dances and even artists like Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny are under the music giant. UMG says it will pull its entire music catalog from TikTok when the contract with the service expires today and incited other issues such as the level of hate and harassment on the platform and TikTok’s stances on artificial intelligence, AI. TikTok is calling their narrative false saying UMG has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters, will this affect your usage on the platform? We’ll keep you updated at Billboard.com.
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