Photo Credit: BoliviaInteligente
BMG and TikTok have inked an expanded partnership deal that they say will prioritize “creating deeper value for songwriters.”
The Bertelsmann-owned music company and the short-form giant disclosed their bolstered pact today, about five months removed from TikTok’s “Songwriter Features” beta launch. According to the brass-tacks release, a renewed direct publishing agreement will see the two “advance songwriter recognition.”
Factoring into a wider “partnership focused on evolving digital rights, creating deeper value for songwriters, and supporting continued innovation,” the new terms will also afford BMG “expanded platform-level capabilities,” per the announcement.
Including but not limited to “more advanced digital rights management tools,” those capabilities will then unlock “deeper visibility into music usage,” BMG indicated.
“This next phase of the partnership advances how publishing rights are recognized across the ecosystem and valued in today’s dynamic, social-first environments,” the Berlin-based business added.
Beyond this overview, TikTok and BMG opted against diving into the deal’s specifics, compensation-related or otherwise.
In fact, the release’s main text, excluding statements from BMG global marketing and streaming EVP Celine Joshua as well as TikTok global head of music business development Tracy Gardner, only runs 120 or so words.
Furthermore, these executive remarks might raise more questions than they answer. Joshua pointed to BMG’s ongoing investments “in systems and structures that protect rights, ensure attribution, and add value for creators across the digital landscape.”
And Gardner applauded BMG’s understanding of “the power of TikTok and the opportunity it creates for songwriters today.”
At the intersection of both statements, “opportunity” and “value” aren’t necessarily indicative of massive paychecks.
While the quick-moving news cycle has rendered the majors’ TikTok showdown little more than a distant memory for most, it wasn’t too long ago that their licensing dispute boiled over.
Reportedly far-from-ideal indie-label terms surfaced shortly thereafter – with much of the focus remaining on TikTok’s policy of paying for music by video as opposed to view count. As some have noted, that means a song-equipped clip with one billion views would generate the same rightsholder compensation as a snippet with a handful of plays.
However, DMN’s picked up on rumblings of a shift to per-view music compensation on TikTok. Thus far, the platform itself hasn’t confirmed the pivot. But we’ll be exploring the change, which will seemingly arrive in the coming months, moving forward.
Also absent from the TikTok-BMG announcement and raising plenty of questions: A breakdown of what exactly the agreement means for “TikTok USA” (not to mention the bigger picture).
Suffice to say that a TikTok ownership overhaul in the world’s largest music market is significant – though we’ll have to stay tuned for details about the resulting industry impact.
