Yeah I genuinely see no difference between tiktok and other social media. Everyone on reddit/lemmy loves to hate on tiktok I never really got why. If it's because of data collection they're doing nothing any different than Facebook, insta, etc. Now X, that's another story lol.
I watch a tiktok maybe once a day. The algorithm is mostly cooking and science for me. It's highly enjoyable content if you get past the noise and obviously don't overuse it. That can be said for any social media app, including lemmy.
I think it's a short-sighted move by Universal. Granted, maybe they know something we don't (Tiktok getting banned soon), but the benefit in TikTok for artists isn't necessarily the revenue but the promotion of their songs. They are short clips, usually no more than 15~20 seconds long. Lots of people use the songs in their videos, lots more people listen to a clip and want to listen to the full thing -> they go to youtube or apple music or whatever where Universal presumably would make a much larger share of the revenue.
This should have far more upvotes than the easy “TikTok sucks” comments above. Whether you like the platform or not, it directly generates revenue for the musicians.
Anecdotally, the amount of times my kids have heard a song on TikTok then gone on to Apple Music and added it to their playlist - then usually listening to other songs by the same artists - must be in the hundreds by now.
TikTok basically controls the Billboard Hot 100 right now. Some say that's why 2023 was, according to a lot of pop music critics, such a bad year for pop.
But honestly, TikTok losing control over Billboard or less UMG artists on the charts are both positives to me.
Oh I see you haven't met yet. Kava, this is the recording industry, they wish it was legal to shoot you in the face for humming a song that sounds like one they own the copyright for unless you've paid them to hum it.
The recording industry, you're going to need a subpoena before I introduce anyone to you.
If it makes you feel any better, I spent 4 minutes in my browser debug tools, deleting the mandatory login trash overlay to see a TikTok video a friend sent me. I was immediately disappointed with all of it and, while I was vindicated in my choice to not log in, I learned my lesson.
Let me just say that I learned more useful and interesting things than I ever did on any other social media platform to date. I also haven’t had a Facebook insta or any of that ilk since 2015. Reddit, then TikTok, then here at Lemmy is all I’ve had since then.
I found lots of videos giving me awesome facts about animals I never learned in school or elsewhere! (A opossum is naturally immune to rabies and is actually good for your wildlife area!)
I learned multiple ways to make things easier on myself, some being: car maintenance, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, acceptance of others and of myself, and laws and politics (that they then give you multiple sources for or show you the website or place they got their info) just to name a few!
While I still get videos that I find funny, most of them have been actually beneficial to me which I couldn’t believe I had been hating on TikTok for so long because I thought it was just dumbass pranks or mindless drivel like “satisfying” videos or whatever.
I’m not saying use it, because I haven’t in a few weeks, but it can actually give you really good and quality content.
Before I would get any itch to join the TikTok trend back when it started, I heard that the Chinese Communist Party was collecting some worrying amount of information on their user base, has been suppressing and/or blocking content that raised voice about the uyghur situation and did various nasty things. So I thought I would stay away from that until the situation improves. I have never heard a fraction of information about that happening. Did everyone just suddenly stop caring about how disgustingly TikTok treats privacy and user data (and how they suppress voices they don't like), or did I just simply miss the bit where they stopped doing all those things?
Because that's one of the many reasons I haven't touched it with a stick.
The vast majority of people don't actually care about any of the issues you raised. They care more about fitting in with their friends and engineered dopamine hits.
Every social media site does the exact same thing. There was just an article on here the other day about the US government buying people's information from data brokers. How is that any different? Meta has been censoring anything pro-Palestine, Twitter is a breeding ground for Nazis, YouTube picks and chooses what counts as "mature content" aka what gets monetized. The way TikTok treats privacy is how every social media platform treats it, it has nothing to do with them being Chinese.
I don't use TikTok, but a lot of the concern is just overblown China bad stuff (CCP does suck, but that doesn't mean you have to be reactionary about everything Chinese).
There is no direct evidence that the CCP has some back door to grab user data, or that it's directing suppression of content. It's just not a real thing. The fear mongering has been about what the CCP could force ByteDance to do, given their power over Chinese firms. ByteDance itself has been trying to reassure everyone that that wouldn't happen, including by storing US user data on US servers out of reach of the CCP (theoretically anyway).
You stopped hearing about this because that's politics, new shinier things popped up to get people angry about. North Dakota or whatever tried banning TikTok and got slapped down on first amendment grounds. Politicians lost interest, and so did the media.
Now that's not to say TikTok is great about privacy or anything. It's just that they are the same amount of evil as every other social media company and tech company making money from ads.
Well, considering I’m on iOS and gave it no access to anything, and I would never use it to upload anything to begin with, these issues do not pertain to me. I don’t link accounts on it, and the email is a burner email that iOS made for me to specifically use for that app.
I think a lot of these privacy concerns are more for people who actually want to use it for posting or making videos. Then I would be worried about all the data. I give them nothing, no real names or anything. So, I would say I’m okay. 👍
“In fact, rabies is extremely rare in opossums, perhaps because they have a much lower body temperature compared to other warm-blooded animals.”
They do have a natural immunity to rabies thanks to their body, but immunity does not always mean 100%. They have a lot lower risk of it, which means they are more immune than other animals.
The copyright shit does go too far sometimes, but if this means I can go into public without having to hear TT on 10 different phones around me at once, I’m a fan.
I read your comment and was trying to figure out why people were listening to an 8 year old Korean song, but realized you're probably talking about something else.
I know it's become a meme, but exposure is a real tangible thing. If I get a clip of my song onto millions of people's phone screens and I don't pay for it, it's basically thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars of free advertising.
Just because some asshole on Facebook marketplace is begging for free commissions doesn't invalidate the benefits you can gain from exposure in general.
Having said all that, we are talking about Universal not some indie folk band. The same thing Tiktok is doing to Universal (paying a very small %) is exactly what Universal does to artists. I have very little empathy for either Tiktok or Universal.
On the topic, I actually support Tiktok more in the sense that independent artists now have the means to go viral much more easily on a platform which inevitably leads to organic growth + success. Universal is a behemoth from an era that hasn't fully died.
This could be a good move for everyone. It said TikTok has agreements with everyone else so many other artists will have the chance to get noticed now. The Universal artists are already well known and don’t really need more promotion anyways. This gives the smaller people a chance. Aight I’m off to learn an instrument, write a song, create a record label, and sign up for TikTok exposure. Wish me luck…how hard could it be.
TikTok videos have gone silent after vast number of songs were removed from the app.
Universal represents many of the world and TikTok’s biggest stars, such as Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Adele.
A statement written as “an open letter to the artist and songwriter community” said: “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay.
“Today, as an indication of how little TikTok compensates artists and songwriters, despite its massive and growing user base, rapidly rising advertising revenue and increasing reliance on music-based content, TikTok accounts for only about 1% of our total revenue.
A statement from TikTok said: “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.
“Despite Universal‘s false narrative and rhetoric, the fact is they have chosen to walk away from the powerful support of a platform with well over a billion users that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent.
The original article contains 435 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 60%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
i used to think it was just the dances but then i started dating a girl last year who uses tiktok a lot and there's actually a lot of interesting content on there. it's like a different version of youtube. there's an algorithm.. you like cooking? lots of interesting cooking videos. there's also some interesting political content, mostly leftist from what i gather.
"The open letter also said TikTok allows the platform to be “flooded with AI-generated recordings”, and also develops tools to “enable, promote and encourage AI music creation on the platform itself”.
It accuses TikTok of “demanding a contractual right which would allow this content to massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists, in a move that is nothing short of sponsoring artist replacement by AI”."
Universal is just salty they didn't think of stealing all the rights via AI replacement first.