For TikTok, Universal Standoff Shows Music No Longer Matters Like It Once Did

TikTok once depended on the music industry to provide the soundtrack for its viral lip-syncing and dancing videos. But TikTok’s leaders have decided the app just doesn’t need those relationships the way it once did.

Multiple times over the past two years, TikTok executives told employees handling music on the platform that one of the app’s record label deals was within weeks of expiring, according to four people employed by the company at the time. On each occasion, TikTok and the labels patched together short-term contract extensions. But late last month, the clock finally ran out on TikTok’s negotiations with the biggest record company in the world, Universal Music Group, leading TikTok to remove UMG’s music from the library of songs available for soundtracking new videos and to mute preexisting TikTok videos that used UMG’s music.