On February 15, a clip of Post Malone singing along to an upcoming collaboration with Luke Combs appeared on TikTok. Post Malone is signed to Mercury/Republic Records, Universal Music Group and UMG's catalog has been unavailable on TikTok since early February. This means that pre-existing videos made of his hits are now played without sound, and users cannot make new clips of his recordings. The video of Post Malone lip-syncing to the track was originally posted on Instagram Reels, but was moved to TikTok anyway – most of the clips – and the audio remained unmuted, bypassing UMG's ban because the song hasn't been officially released.
“We can still use the platform to tease new music because until the master hits TikTok, nothing will happen,” he says Tim Gerst, CEO of Nashville-based digital marketing firm Thinkswell. “We're not really going to change our strategy much.”
Artists silenced by the UMG-TikTok impasse used this and other workarounds during the first month of being banned from what is arguably the most effective marketing tool. Indeed, digital marketers say they haven't seen an exit from the platform since negotiations between the two companies collapsed.
“Artists who are affected by this are just more creative on TikTok in how they put the music out,” Shopkeeper Management digital marketing director Laura Spinelli says. “People make acoustic versions of songs. they change pace [so that songs don’t trigger TikTok’s sonic fingerprinting system]; they talk around it.
“It's not, TikTok is gone, so I'll continue [YouTube] Shorts,” Spinelli continues. “It's, 'Gentlemen have left TikTok.' how can I still get my music out?' “
While there are many digital platforms that artists can use to promote their music, the reality is that none have been able to consistently replicate TikTok's impact over the past four years. “There's really no other comparable digital marketing strategy or platform for showcasing new music,” he says Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of Black 17, The Orchard's flagship TikTok label. “Trends are linked to songs on TikTok in a unique way. In Reels and Shorts, the audience cares less about the song, more about the content of the video.”
“TikTok is No. 1 for music discovery,” he adds Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of digital marketing company Songfluencer. “These other platforms don't drive consumption in the same way that TikTok does.”
It's also not clear that Reels and Shorts are even trying to challenge TikTok the way they once did. When the two platforms launched in 2020, both appeared poised to compete for TikTok's market share — the app was recently banned in India, and President Donald Trump threatened to do the same in the United States.
However, in the years since, “both of these products, which came out as competitors to TikTok, have evolved,” says another digital marketer who has worked with artists and brands. “They're different than they used to be, and the focus of the companies behind them has shifted.”
The digital marketer points to a recent blog post in which YouTube CEO Neil Mohan announced that “YouTube's next frontier is the living room,” suggesting that the platform is increasingly interested in competing with a company like Netflix rather than other purveyors of short-form video. “It might not be what you'd expect,” Mohan wrote, “but people love watching Shorts on their TVs.”
Reels and its parent company, Meta, have also undergone significant changes in the past 12 months. In 2023, the company shut down the bonus system it had put in place to financially incentivize the activity of creators. (That program seemed like another attempt to compete with TikTok, which had announced its own $200 million creator fund in 2020.) A few months later, Meta launched another platform, Threads. Just as Reels once seemed to aim to capitalize on TikTok's misfortunes, the timing of Threads' arrival seemed like an attempt to capitalize on Elon Musk's X woes. Meta's new platform also seemed to signal a shift in the company's priorities.
Even so, most artists have been posting at least TikTok clips to Shorts and Reels for several years now, eager to get exposure where they can.
Shorts have helped artists grow their YouTube subscribers, and subscribers can monetize in other ways. Harrison Goldingwho oversees digital marketing for EMPIRE, has seen it act as a “discovery tool in countries where YouTube is their primary streaming platform,” such as India.
Reels is still a machine for growing followers as well. “If you want to grow on Instagram right now, Reels is the way to do it,” says Spinelli. In addition, manager Tommy Kiljoy says Reels helped lead listeners to ThxSoMch client's latest release, “Hide Your Kids,” as well as Sawyer Hill's “Look at the Time,” which recently topped Spotify's Viral 50 chart in the U.S. States.
But “we're seeing more trends on TikTok,” he says Hemis Golkar, a digital marketer that works with all major labels. “We hardly ever see record trends in Reels or Shorts.”
While UMG's catalog remains officially unavailable on TikTok, it has always been the case that any user can upload audio to the platform. Many viral trends start thanks to unofficial bootlegs, and “some artists just put songs as original sounds,” according to Nima Naseriformer vice president of A&R strategy for Universal Music Group;
Artists “speed up their songs a little bit, do different edits” and post them on TikTok, Kiljoy notes. “I've seen people lean [the absence of the music] more than anything else and get a rise out of it.” (UMG artists' music may also still be available if they collaborated with an actress on another label: For example, TikTokers can find Drake rapping on “Meltdown ” by Travis Scott.)
Additionally, artists have devised ways to continue to find their music without the official recording. Singer d4vd, whose hits on TikTok led to a record deal with UMG's Darkroom/Interscope Records, recently posted a video titled “d4vd songs that sound better live,” which shows him performing ” Leave Her”, his latest release.
Gerst has had success promoting his clients' older music in cases where it was recorded outside of the UMG system. “We're going back and promoting a lot of back-catalogue content,” says Gerst. A video his team posted to the soundtrack of “I'm Gonna Miss Her,” Brad Paisley's goofy tribute to fishing, has garnered over 30 million views on TikTok and Reels. The song was originally released via Sony in 2001, but a retrospective that's racking up millions of views continues to keep Paisley in the spotlight for fans as he moves towards a new album.
Even UMG artists who have expressed their frustration that their music isn't available on TikTok continue to post anyway. “Two huge corporations are deciding what to do with people's art. it's a little crazy,” artist Yungblud said in a TikTok video after negotiations broke down. “Everything can be removed at the push of a button.”
However, he continues to post every few days, uploading a mix of on-stage and backstage videos, an acoustic performance of “When We Die (Can We Still Get High?)” and interview footage. The same goes for Muni Long, who posted an interview on TikTok in which she called the absence of her music from the platform “bad,” and another clip of a group of fans screaming along to her single “Made For Me” in a basketball game. .
The standoff between UMG and TikTok is about to enter a new phase where any songs that have contributions from Universal Music Publishing Group songwriters disappear from the platform, meaning artists and marketers will have to readjust. “We're not going to give up on TikTok,” says Gerst. “We're just going to find new ways to do it.”
