Earlier this year, Universal Music Group (UMG) removed the music from their extensive catalog of artists—including the likes of Justin Bieber, Drake, and Taylor Swift—from TikTok after TikTok and UMG failed to renew their licensing pact, which expired in January of 2024, causing the always-lively app to fall somewhat silent.
As previously covered by The Daily Dot, this silence caused a humorous strike back by TikTok users, who instead replaced the UMG artist’s music in their videos with royalty-free music—such as the iconic “Fluff the duck” sound—in their various fan edits, which led to some absolutely chaotic content.
For example, this Taylor Swift fan edit that replaced their originally chosen Tay-Tay track with the aforementioned hilarious sound:
@w4ybright thanks tiktok for muting our edits!! gonna start using kahoot music and this ig. ? || insta account on my bio, i'll start posting more content there ? #taylorswift #taylorswiftedit #taylornation #taylorsversion #swifttie #swfittok#erastour #theerastour #reputation #lover #midnights #ae #fyp
♬ original sound - w4ybright - w4ybright
However, Swifties in specific can rejoice today as the artist has recently added songs from her post-2019 catalog back to the app for use!
Several sources, including Dexerto and Popcrave, broke the news that, as of Thursday morning, some of the artist's music is back on the app and available for use on TikTok—but not all of her music.
Taylor Swift’s owned music catalogue has returned to TikTok, due to her owning the publishing rights to her albums that have been created since 2019. pic.twitter.com/tf7AJsdTxb
— Pop Base (@PopBase) April 11, 2024
For those not in the know, Taylor has been undergoing a massive rerecording effort of all of her pre-2019 tracks with the goal of owning all of her own masters. She currently has all of her pre-2019 albums rerecorded and released, with the notable exceptions of her 2006 debut, self-titled album and her 2017 album Reputation.
As reported by Variety, the return of her music to the beloved app is likely a direct result of Taylor owning these masters, and thus she was likely able to make a deal separate from UMG with TikTok directly due to this ownership.
Naturally, fans of the artist had many reactions to this news:
she’s gearing up for TTPD to go viral on TikTok ohhh tayPromoter tayLegend tayCapitalist tayViral queen
— AJ DEL REY ? (@TayLanaForeverr) April 11, 2024
Other fandoms made fun of Taylor rerecording her music and fighting to own her masters and she is now the only artist under UMG to put her owned catalogue back on the platform as she has every rights to do so because SHE OWNS THEM!
— tm | Eras SG Night 4 7/3 (@TMlovesRED) April 11, 2024
scooter braun loses again.
— spicy? (@lovepopgirls) April 11, 2024
stan twitter: taylor doesn’t own her masters ? scooter owns her ?
— ؘ (@benitosversion) April 11, 2024
taylor: *owns her masters and publishing rights*
stan twitter: she’s so fraudulent, this is unfair for other artists!!! https://t.co/VMk41yBoLl
So, if you’re suddenly feeling the urge to make a Swiftie TikTok, go record to your heart’s desire.
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