NE, You're Not Dreaming, Taylor Swift is Gone From TikTok

If you keep an eye on the music industry, you may have heard that this dispute was coming to a head. We had heard the news, but assumed that it was going to be resolved before it came to music being pulled from the platform.

Apparently, we were wrong.

If you were wondering why you could not find the real version of some of your favorite songs on TikTok, we have the answer. According to WMTW and CNN, Universal Music Group has pulled their music off of the popular social media platform over an ongoing dispute about royalties.

While Taylor Swift was probably the biggest artist who is no longer on TikTok, other major artists include Ariana Grande, Drake, Rihanna, and Latin hip-hop artist Bad Bunny.

Universal Music Group has been in talks with ByteDance, the owners of TikTok, to get what they are calling "appropriate compensation" for artists and songwriters.

According to UMG, artists and songwriters are getting a fraction of the amount of compensation they should be getting, considering how many people use TikTok on a daily basis. UMG representatives say that despite how important music is to the platform's content creators, money from TikTok only accounts for 1% of the music giant's revenue.

ByteDance has responded that they feel UMG is putting their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters. It appears that is ByteDance's way of saying that their platform is giving artists huge amounts of free promotion.

Hopefully, this dispute will get worked out, and we'll see these major artists return to the platform soon.

In the meantime, if you really want to use a Taylor or Ariana song in your video, there are a bunch of covers on the platform. They are nowhere near as good as the real versions, but they are available for use.