Taylor Swift’s songs return to TikTok despite Universal Music veto

Taylor Swift’s songs reappear on TikTok after Universal Music Group (UMG) decided to liquidate the entire music catalog distributed under its label after failing to reach an agreement to extend a contract allowing the Chinese social network to use songs from the world’s most important music company. And recordings from other artists who also work with Universal Music are still unavailable.

How were you able to verify Hypertext, the entire music catalog Taylor Swift has released since 2019, including the albums “Lover”, “folklore”, “evermore” and “Midnights”, as well as re-recordings of “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)”, “RED (Taylor’s Version)”, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)”. and “1989 (Taylor Version)” are available on the official account. Users can also use songs for their videos normally, as well as audio from those TikToks that contain official artist tracks. available again little by little.

Songs by other artists who also work with UGM, such as Lana del Rey, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande or Drake and others – we repeat -, still not available. UMG, we recall, decided to withdraw all tracks distributed under its label after TikTok refused to improve payment terms for artists and composers. The ByteDance-owned social network also refused to include protections against songs created by artificial intelligence, as well as the “hate speech, bigotry and harassment” that artists suffer on the platform, Universal detailed in a statement.

UGM also condemned this TikTok even threatened them by removing content from up-and-coming artists. which are not as popular (and therefore do not generate as much profit for the platform).

Why songs by Taylor Swift and not other artists?

However, Why are only Taylor Swift’s songs available and not other singers? It’s likely that a clause in Swift’s contract with the label, which states that the artist owns her albums and has publishing rights, allowed Swift to distribute her music on TikTok again.

However, other singers who also distribute content, such as Olivia Rodrigo, also have the rights to their albums after following in Swift’s footsteps, and they are unavailable. This suggests that the return of Taylor Swift’s catalog to TikTok is part of an agreement that the singer herself reached personally with Universal.

The return of Swift’s songs to the platform could also be linked to the upcoming release “Department of Martyred Poets”‘, their eleventh studio album, will be released on April 19. Having her albums on the social network will allow Swift to also publish her new project. At this time, neither Swift, her team, nor Universal have commented on the matter.