When Uber Eats used Mazie's “Dumb Dumb” in a commercial that played during the last Super Bowl, it would normally have used the sought-after timing to promote the 2021 song relentlessly to its 375,000 TikTok followers. But her label, Goodbye Records, is distributed through Universal's Virgin Music Group, which pulled its music from the social media platform in early February after negotiations for a new licensing deal collapsed. “It's crazy,” Mazie says. “My song was just in a Super Bowl commercial and I have to re-promote it [by] using cut versions of my song by others on the platform.”
The singer-songwriter, whose track went viral last year and says it “changed my life in every way,” is one of a number of frustrated up-and-coming artists signed or distributed by the world's biggest music label. They all have similar complaints: Their label contacts have spent years instructing them to focus the bulk of their marketing efforts on TikTok and its now 1 billion monthly active users. With their music no longer on the platform, they are trying to find alternative ways to be heard.
“A lot of us have been back at the drawing board, especially when we've caught an artist over the stress of putting themselves out there on TikTok,” he says. Sabrina Finkelstein, manager of Los Angeles singer Kristiane. “Now that that's out of the way, it almost brings you to point one.”
Kristiane is signed to Fader, a label distributed by UMG's Virgin Music Group, so she's building buzz for her upcoming Stray dog EP focusing on TikTok and talking to fans on Instagram broadcast channels and other platforms. “We put up lost dog posters all over New York and other cities,” says Finkelstein, who is also director of A&R for Sony Music's RECORDS label. “Little things you can do to bring it out of TikTok and into the real world.”
Springfield, Mo., folk-country band Pawns or Kings can no longer post 2022 track 'Anymore' on TikTok because Universal bought its distributor, Ingrooves, and merged it with Virgin Music Group — even after the singer Edward Stengel spent $7,000 of his own money on a video. “That song has always been the spearhead song,” says Stengel, who still promotes the track on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, while posting older material released through indie label ONErpm on TikTok. But Pawns or Kings' early music is darker than its current work, Stengel says, which makes the stopgap strategy “a sharp turn” for the band's image.
Canadian rapper bbno$ says his 2021 track “Edamame,” which has nearly 426 million plays on Spotify, was “having a moment” on TikTok when the UMG ban went into effect. The artist had licensed the song to mTheory's distribution arm for five years — the same mTheory that UMG acquired in 2022 (putting its top executives in charge of Virgin). “I'm actually completely independent. It was just this deal that put all the songs together, and I was fucked,” says bbno$, who considers changing the song with pitch correction and wild sound effects — like SpongeBob's voice repeating, “I' I'm ready!” — to avoid detection by digital scans.
LA rock band Dead Posey, who released her single “Zombies” just days before the ban, sped up her songs on TikTok by 5% — an effective solution, though artists can't link unofficial songs to official Spotify streams. “It hasn't been abolished,” says the singer Daniel Souza, whose label, Position Music, has a Virgin distribution deal. Adds guitarist Tony Fagenson: “We hope this will be resolved soon in a favorable way for the artists. In the meantime, we have to do some tricks to keep using this platform.”
Artists signed and distributed by UMG are also turning to their most powerful asset on TikTok: fans. One of Kristiane's followers recently posted a video lip-syncing to a concert track, stating, “At least UMG can't take away my live sounds.” Finkelstein supports this approach. “No matter what, fans will find a way to share their artists' music and support them,” he says. “There are ways around it.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024 issue Advertising sign.
