Finnish artists tell Iltalehte their opinion about Universal Music’s decision to remove their music from the giant Finnish platform Tiktok.
Jannika B, Pyhimys and Tinze tell Iltalehte how it feels when their music was removed from Tiktok. IL
Universal Music ended cooperation with Tiktok on Wednesday. At the same time, all its artists around the world lost an important promotion channel. The disagreements between the two giants are basically about money, says the president of the musicians’ union Ahti Vänttinen To Yle.
According to the record company, Tiktok’s compensation for the use of music was not at the same level as other social media services. Universal Music announced its decision openly with a letter on their website. Chinese-owned Tiktok denied the allegations and accused the label of greed.
Mikael Gabriel commented on the matter on Yle and said that he felt the change as a negative thing, for example in terms of his ongoing UMK promotion. He even hinted at a scenario where the removal of Tiktok visibility causes artists to leave Universal’s stable.
However, the Finnish artists of Universal interviewed by Iltalehti do not see the change as a negative thing.
Rap artist Saint considers the record company’s decision to be the right one, because he is quite critical of Tiktok as a social media platform.
– TikTok has not done anything good for music, he says.
– I hope that it would be really worth it, and not just a matter that can be settled with money. This change doesn’t affect what I’m doing much, but maybe someone will still find a way to reach the people who want to follow my music.
For Jannika B, the record company’s decision came at a bad time.
– Of course, it’s a really sad situation for me, when it was published on Friday, February 2 TetrisTiktok videos from the album were now left on the shelf, Jannika B says directly.
– However, I sincerely want to believe that Universal is doing well, he continues.
Dancer Tinzekin welcomed Universal’s decision.
– This is a strong statement, but I stand behind it. I feel that every artist deserves to be paid for their work. I hope that this will bring something new and I believe that good will come from the change, says Tinze.
Two-part Tiktok
Tinze admits that Tiktok has enabled important promotion for many artists. Many budding artists have been able to gain great visibility when their video has started trending on Tiktok.
It has been a challenging start for Tinzelle, but on the other hand, she just reached 900,000 followers on YouTube.
– I have a third account in progress, twice the account has been deleted. According to Tiktok, I encourage people to commit sexual acts, and according to Tiktok, I was naked in all the videos, which of course is not true! In that way, this has been a bit amusing, he laughs.
According to the saint, Tiktok can create an illusion of success for the artist and lead to lower quality music.
– In Tiktok, the most important function of the music is not to be good, but catchy. Long-term work is not rewarded, but the biggest personal brands of the social media age are those who are in the public eye just for the sake of publicity, i.e. useless celebrities. These live advertising platforms can be used to sell anything, Pyhimys sums up.
The consumer may also get a distorted picture of what kind of music is actually popular in the eyes of the general public. This can be influenced by the artist’s own activity on Tiktok and also paid marketing.
– Apparently the platforms are trying to maximize their own advertising revenue by changing features to paid ones, says Pyhimys.
According to him, paid marketing does not guarantee popularity, even though the artist, song or album may appear great to the consumer as a result.
– If it doesn’t end up being a topic of conversation at all, it’s hard for anyone to find music, he admits.
In addition, the rapper is worried about the threat images of using Tiktok, for example in relation to people’s privacy and health.
– In my opinion, Tiktok is fully consciously programmed to be as addictive as possible, and in addition, it must be given exceptionally broad rights to share information about the user’s life. At a time when there is no verified information, i.e. there are no commonly accepted reliable sources for it, it is important to use power to promote common values, not profit maximization, he reminds.
– In my opinion, Tiktok also contains elements that consciously lead to questioning common, very fundamental values, so in general I do not support applications in question or those that take a model from it.
In the rapper’s opinion, when evaluating an artist’s success, one should look at real, lasting popularity.