 Universal Music Group said they are pulling all of their artist music off of TikTok today. And the crazy part about it is, they just mentioned this last night, about 7pm ET on Twitter. Wow. That's kind of wild. I think this is something that needs to be addressed. There's multiple aspects of this, but there's some potential positives for the indie artists out there, the developing acts out there, unless you're under the Universal, because this is the reality. Universal has come with these quotes, right? They actually, for real, posted on Twitter. And it said something like, our mission is simple, to help our artists and songwriters attain their greatest creative and commercial potential, which is why we must call a timeout on TikTok, an open letter to the artist and songwriter community. So then you click the link on Twitter, and it takes you to this beautifully written letter. You know, PR all over it, just everywhere. Sentences, yeah, they're there, but let's summarize it. There's a couple of key points, and it gets a little weird at the end, because the first one is, yes, we care about our artists. You guys are not paying our artists enough money. Second one is, AI, you're enabling that, you're allowing that to run free, and that is a threat to our bottom line, if you read between the lines. And then thirdly, it gets weird. We start just trying to say, well, y'all allow bullying on the platform and some other forms of infringement and bigotry on the platform, and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, universal. What's that got to do with you? Since when do you care about all this stuff? Aren't there some things in-house that you need to handle? And I think that's the artist's response. There's an open letter to Universal. Hey, after years of you being the major label of the major labels, many artists don't quite feel, eh, sorry for you. That's the sentiment I'm getting from my artist homies, right? It's like, this is cool, but we don't quite believe you. We don't think that you care for us, because time and time again, you've shown us that you don't show up for us. Case in point, you own a portion of Spotify. Did you ask us about that? No. And we actually are suing you about it, some of us, right? Because you own a portion of Spotify, and technically, that's equity in the company, an artist should be able to split that equity, yet we just profit off of the streaming, you profit off of the streaming, but you're also double dipping with that chip on the equity side. How come we aren't doing so? You didn't even tell us about it. I mean, it basically kind of feels like you're that dad that never comes around until you got in a hole gambling, and next thing you know, you're like, son, let me get some money up, please. Trying to act like you care about me, right? Now that you're in a hole, you want to use me as a puppet in your situation, right? Or a pawn, so you can win this game of chess. Don't do that. Come on, man. Like, we know what it is, so let's not play this game. That's the sentiment that I'm getting from my artist homies. And I think a lot of that is validated also in the fact that y'all just made this announcement last night. Did all the artists under Universal find out when the rest of the world did? Because we're not just talking about Universal, right? Universal is universal. Not just a major label. You got the subsidiaries and the subsidiaries under the subsidiaries. It's like McDonald's owning Chipotle and Burger King and Burger King owning five guys. Like, it's a whole tree down there. That is that type of impact that they legitimately have on the industry. So it's no way that they could have let everybody know about this before it came, because it also would have leaked. It's too many people that would have impact. So we know that artists weren't quite prepared for this moment. And one of the major pieces of information that they revealed in this is, yo, TikTok, y'all are only equating to about 1% of our revenue. And based on the activity, the impact of TikTok, we feel like we should have more. So when you think about it that way, there probably is some validity to that, right? TikTok, y'all could stand to pay more. But when you think about the risk for them, well, it's only 1% of their revenue. But when you think about the artist side, that's an impact to my career as a developing artist. Yes, you have Drake, The Weeknd, J. Cole, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, cool. You have those people and they could stand to reign. I can't stand to reign right now. I'm still trying to develop, right? I need awareness. I need discovery. And here's what we have to think about the incentives, right? How we think through the industry. It's been revealed. It's out there that fans that find your music through TikTok, those types of fans, tend to spend more money at your shows. They tend to spend more money on merch. But Universal's not making money from that stuff unless they got a 360 with you. So they don't quite care about that. It's that catalog, that streaming that they need to protect. The fact that the rest of your career might suffer from it. Eh, that's just casualty, right? It is what it is. Charge it to the game. And I can only imagine having a portion of your business cut out in that way, just because your label couldn't come to a deal. And I want to read some of these comments from Russ because of that. He said, A label stomping its feet because it's not getting paid enough for the music they own is top notch comedy. They say it's because our songwriters and artists aren't being compensated fairly when in reality it's their own pockets they're worried about. Curious if UMG asks the artist if they agree with this decision to remove their music from the most influential platform in music. No one's saying the rates shouldn't improve, but labels act in like they're looking out for the artists when they really are looking out for themselves and just want more money is misleading. And they're trying to gaslight by cosplaying as some protector of artists. This UMG TikTok thing is most likely just UMG posturing. Because they got the big acts. They got the Nicki Minaj's and such. TikTok with what those people on. Yes, I agree. However, things are a little bit different in this climate. I don't think it will be the end of the world if TikTok lost these big artists that UMG has. What I think will happen is you then will find that these indies will start rising to the top. There's a lot of quality indie artists out there. A lot of them. There's a lot of AI music development that's happening within TikTok. And I think they've been looking and preparing for this moment. They started that last year. I mean, they knew this was coming. This is nothing new. They were putting out these signs as a little wink-wink to the labels. I know that deals coming around. Y'all see what we're doing. Y'all see we're making y'all less important. At least we're trying to. So we know that this is a back and forth. I don't think TikTok is completely innocent in this. I don't think UMG is completely innocent in this. But the reality is UMG can't expect people to see them as a victim. That's just the reality of being one of the big guys, particularly in the music industry when artists have historically felt that they've been underserved, gotten what they don't deserve, and stripped of the value that they feel they should receive. I think someone said, well, why don't we say UMG, pay the artist more if they care so much about the artist prior to this? Or even during this moment in time, while you're making this deal of such a small portion of your revenue, why don't you pay artists a little bit more? And then you just take a smaller portion in the meantime while you make a deal. I don't know. I don't have the primary solution to it. But I can at least observe that this is a tricky position. In some ways, UMG is right. Let's be real with it. They are right that TikTok can stand and pay more. Nobody looks as TikTok as a revenue stream. However, the way the platform is built off of short form content, I don't... There's not really a great payout system on any short form content platform. I haven't seen it. I think they compare TikTok to saying that Peloton is paying more than TikTok. That's like the stationary bike system for those of you who don't know. Yeah, but I don't know how commercials play on Peloton. So I'm not going to even get too deep into that. But I know on TikTok, I don't really expect money when it comes to IG Reels. I don't really expect money when it comes to YouTube Shorts. I don't really expect money. So maybe it's a little bit more complicated when it comes to the correct payouts when it comes to Shorts. I don't think we've mastered that yet. Nobody's paying out like YouTube is when it comes to their revenue. But that's more long form content. So, you know, are they both wrong a little bit? Or could they both stand to do better? Yes. And hey, artists, maybe Universal isn't a hero you want, but maybe it's the hero you need in this situation. So let's see how it plays out at the end of the day. I've said a lot of things about Universal just being the major label and the musician they are and how people have felt about the label as a whole. But on the other side, somebody does have to have this conversation with TikTok. Who better than them? I don't know. That is a good start. But do you have a good reason not to trust a major label system? I mean, I get it. So let's see how this goes. And we'll report as things continue to evolve and we have our conversations with those in the know. Peace.