Image credit: Laura Chouette

The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) has decided to not renew their licence with TikTok, with their agreement expiring on April 30th.

Due to the NMPA’s decision to not renew their licence with TikTok, a plethora of indie publishers are likely to remove their artists’ content from the social media site.

This is set to take place only a few months after Universal Music Group decided to pull their catalogue from the platform.

Even if independent artists are signed to a publisher, the NMPA will no longer be an active member of the platform meaning DIY musicians will receive less protection in garnering the royalties that are owed to them.

Without this licence in place, independent publishers will have to negotiate their own kind of deal with TikTok directly once the NMPA’s licence expires on April 30th.

What has the NMPA stated?

The full statement from the NMPA expanded on their reasoning for not renewing their licence, saying; ‘It is important that all NMPA members understand that without a licence in place, TikTok should not be using your musical works on its platform.’

In the letter the NMPA sent to their members, the NMPA concluded their statement by imploring users to ‘take this opportunity to fully evaluate what is being offered and make a decision for what is best for their business, not TikTok’s’.

Collect your TikTok royalties with RouteNote Publishing!

Here at RouteNote Publishing, we can collect performance and mechanical royalties which are the primary publishing royalties generated from TikTok.

On the plus side, the removal of UMG’s content from the service and now numerous indie publishers catalogues could see a wider space for independent music to begin to take over the social media giant – read more about this here!

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