TikTok has walked away from licensing negotiations with Merlin, the digital music licensing organisation, saying that it would prefer to strike direct deals with the indie labels which use the Merlin deal, claiming that thereâs a history of copyright legitimacy problems, and music that is ânot quality controlled for copyrightâ, coming via Merlin members.Â
Whether that is people deliberately uploading music they donât have the rights to as part of an attempt to fraudulently collect royalties, or whether itâs people uploading sped up/slowed down or otherwise manipulated tracks in a misguided belief that they can do so without permission of the original copyright holder, is not clear.Â
However, no one is pretending that there are not widespread problems across the whole industry to do with âcopyright legitimacyâ. What is important is that key stakeholders in the value chain - like Merlin, and like the Music Fights Fraud alliance - are taking significant steps to address those problems.Â
A TikTok spokesperson told CMU, âWe know that our community of over a billion music fans value the diversity and richness that independent music brings to our platform. We are committed to entering into direct deals with Merlin members in order to keep their music on TikTokâ.
The company is keen to stress that its motivation for ditching Merlin, and going after its members to get them to sign direct deals, is the âbig burdenâ of âquality control for copyrightâ, adding that direct deals will give them âbetter controlâ over that process.
As the story broke yesterday, TikTokâs music licensing honcho Ole Obermann told MBWâs Murray Stassen that the spat is ânot about bad blood with Merlinâ but rather that âby doing direct deals, if we detect any kinds of content copyright issues, we can address it directlyâ, adding âitâs that simpleâ.
It is the supposed âsimplicityâ of tackling the problem that many in the independent label community have said is âdisingenuousâ. Over the course of a number of conversations with senior executives and licensing specialists from the independent sector, a different message is coming across: TikTok wants to divide and conquer, and is using smoke and mirrors to put forward an argument that doesnât stand up to scrutiny.
In fact, some sources who spoke to CMU said that... | 
