By Karl Quinn
Universal Music Group has announced a new deal with Spotify aimed at increasing the “virality” of new releases, in what appears to be an expansion of the label’s battle with TikTok.
The partnership was unveiled on Thursday (US time), just two weeks after Spotify announced it would make full-length music videos available on its platform, putting it in direct competition with YouTube – and, indirectly, Universal.
Ariana Grande has two short videos on Clips.Credit: Invision
The world’s largest music label is a partner in Vevo, the service that hosts music videos from artists signed to the big three major labels – UMG, Sony and Warners. With a roster of more than 35,000 artists and 900,000 videos, and 25 billion views per month, Vevo is available through multiple channels, with YouTube the most important.
The main target of the deal between UMG and Spotify, however, is TikTok, which has over the past five years risen to become arguably the most important tool available for music promotion, through official artist and label channels and the accounts of ordinary users who use popular (and sometimes obscure) music to soundtrack their clips.
Universal began removing its artists’ music from the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform on February 1, after failing to reach a new licensing agreement when the previous three-year deal came to an end.
The label accused the social media platform of paying too little for the use of the music that has fuelled its growth (it now has more than 1.2 billion monthly users, making it the fourth-largest social media platform in the world), of failing to safeguard against the “harmful effects of AI”, and of not doing enough to guarantee the online safety of its users.
A couple of weeks later, the dispute extended to the publishing side of the business. In some instances, that meant music disappeared if there was even one Universal-signed writer on it – regardless of the rest of the team’s status – leaving many creators with no relationship with UMG negatively impacted by the dispute.
The new deal is aimed squarely at TikTok’s sweet spot, promising to “amplify music discovery and social interaction and enhance fan experiences” via Spotify.
Universal artists “will have the ability to share teasers of upcoming music” before a new release, the label said. It also promised the partners would “explore additional features that allow fans to discover artists and propel virality of new releases”, with more details to come soon.
However, there was no indication that those features would include user-generated content, which has been the lifeblood of TikTok’s success.
Any such move, were it to be announced, would represent a major departure from Spotify’s position on video content to date, best summed up by the launch of its Clips functionality a year ago.
“On many of the most popular channels for social video, music isn’t the priority,” a blog post on Spotify For Artists claimed on March 9, 2023. “It often gets cut into soundbites and is pushed to the background, while the artists are anonymised and content creators are put front-and-centre. That’s why we built Clips.”
Designed to allow artists to speak directly to fans with short (sub-30-second) videos, Clips is still in Beta mode a year after first being touted. Its take-up so far appears to have been extremely limited; Ariana Grande has two short videos, Taylor Swift one, and Charli XCX – who featured prominently in the promotional material – has none.
Whether this new announcement marks a broader rollout of Clips or a move into user-generated content remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the battle between Universal and TikTok is far from over.
Contact the author at kquinn@theage.com.au, follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.