Narrative
In early 2024, a client's track vanishes as the soundtrack to their own TikTok video. A banner says it is no longer available. This was not a glitch and not an isolated takedown: Universal Music Group had pulled its entire catalogue from TikTok overnight, and hundreds of thousands of songs disappeared from the platform at once.
It was a negotiation tactic, the opening move in one of the most publicly visible disputes in years. For anyone advising rostered artists, the standoff is a case study in where platform leverage and catalogue leverage actually meet, and what a client's exposure looks like when the two collide.