On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the popular app, or it would be blocked in the U.S. While the legislation would have profound impacts across the tech, political, entertainment, media and marketing worlds, music may be especially affected. TikTok's first incarnation was as a lip-syncing app, Musical.ly, and the app dominates music discovery for young listeners. If the app were banned in the U.S.
Sarah Flanagan, a former senior director of digital marketing at Columbia Records , said that “TikTok hasn’t figured out a way to compensate artists or labels fairly for the amount of music that gets used. As great as it’s been for music discovery, I hope this works, because TikTok’s system for compensating artists is either not good enough or they don’t care enough.” Yet labels' and publishers' main complaint is that the service isn't paying enough for rights to their catalogs.