UMGNF Stock Recent News

More than two months after Universal Music Group removed music from its artists—including Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Ariana Grande—off of the TikTok music library because of an ongoing dispute, some of Swift's songs mysteriously reappeared on the app.

Taylor Swift's music is back on TikTok, even as the Chinese short-video app and singer's record label Universal Music are at loggerheads, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Universal Music Group on Wednesday said its unit in Greater China has entered a global digital distribution partnership with Chinese entertainment company TF Entertainment.

As its public dispute with TikTok continues, Universal Music Group has set an expanded strategic relationship with Spotify. The new agreement will “further amplify music discovery and social interaction and enhance fan experiences,” the companies said in a joint announcement.

Universal Music Group (EURONEXT:UMG) can mostly recover lost revenue from TikTok by selling additional products and services to the social media platform's competitors, analysts at UBS believe.   Since early February, the music group has been making TikTok remove songs written or co-written by artists signed to UMG from the social media platform after the two companies did not renew their music licensing agreement.

Universal Music Group N.V. (UMGNF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

TikTok is losing even more songs over its quarrel with Universal Music Group (UMG), as the social media network is starting to remove songs published by UMG. The row between the two companies began last month when UMG announced that it failed to reach a deal with TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, over royalties.

TikTok has begun removing Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) content from the video app as it failed to reach a new licensing agreement with the music label, the social media firm said on Tuesday.

Since the dispute between TikTok and Universal Music Group (EURONEXT:UMG) last week, many of the most popular songs on the social media platform have been removed. These include songs from Taylor Swift and more than a third of the top 50 most popular songs, per the Billboard TikTok Top 50 chart.

Universal Music Group (UMG), the world's largest music company, recently announced that it would be pulling its music—including Taylor Swift, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo, Bad Bunny, and thousands of other artists—from TikTok because its license agreement was expiring and renewal talks had broken down. The license expired yesterday, and TikTok has initiated steps to remove UMG-published music from its platform.