Peach PRC is one of a handful of Australian acts that burst through the Taylor Swift bubble to top the ARIA Album Charts in 2023.
The viral pop star owes her meteoric success to TikTok, where she has over 2 million followers.
The 26-year-old Adelaide native born Sharlee Curnow was discovered on the hugely popular platform and signed to Island Records, a subsidiary of major label Universal Music Group (UMG).
However, Peach PRC is currently relying on a loophole to promote her next single.
"Y'all got like 2 weeks to learn the lyrics before UMG catches on and mutes this," she wrote in a TikTok video featuring an unreleased song.
She's "leaked" the single in two subsequent videos, lip-syncing to the track while cleaning her kitchen.
What is the Universal Tiktok ban?
Artists promoting their music on TikTok is nothing new, but these specific conditions are.
UMG and TikTok – two of the world's biggest music entities – are currently in a licensing stalemate, and musicians have been caught in the crossfire.
In case you missed it: UMG has begun pulling its music from TikTok after announcing late January that it would not renew its global licensing deal with the hugely popular social media platform, accusing TikTok of "bully" tactics and intimidation in a savage open letter.
TikTok, which has become the go-to app for music exposure, blasted back, accusing UMG of "putting their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters."
Music from UMG's biggest stars – including Taylor Swift, Drake, Bad Bunny, and Bilie Eilish – has been pulled from TikTok, resulting in millions of uploaded videos falling silent.
Hilltop Hoods, Middle Kids, Matt Corby, Mallrat, and The Avalanches are among the notable Australian acts under the UMG umbrella that have seen their music muted.
The move has also silenced award-winning First Nations artists Baker Boy, Barkaa, Kobie Dee, and Jada Weazal.
How are content creators adapting to the ban?
Faced with the world's biggest music label and publisher hitting the mute button, users have been employing royalty-free music to ironic effect.
One particular track, titled 'Fluffing a Duck' has become a viral choice, soundtracking everything from Taylor Swift fan edits to popular content creators.
Although the major disruption to the algorithm has blown up into a trending in-joke, for those musicians that depend on TikTok to promote and share their music, it's no laughing matter.
Australian acts fall silent
While the Lady Gagas and Ariana Grandes of the world have yet to publicly address the impact, several homegrown artists are not taking UMG's decision lying down.
Peach PRC was among the first to point out the hypocrisy and damaging ripple effects to the platform in a video synced to a popular clip of SpongeBob SquarePants: "Who do they think they are? I've given the best years of my life to this place, and they think they can just fire me like that? Like trash? I don't think so!"
Best known for his weepy, multi-platinum break-up hit 'Be Alright', singer-songwriter Dean Lewis seemed none too happy that UMG's TikTok exodus aligned with the release of his newest single 'Memories'.
"This is a very weird thing to post but I just found out that all my music … literally every song I've ever done is being taken down," Lewis told his 3.3 million followers.
"So, my music's getting taken down in five hours but I have a new song coming out in nine hours. So, my song's not coming out on TikTok."
Young Franco, a Sydney-based producer signed to UMG imprint Of Leisure, playfully addressed his music's removal by encouraging fans to use an a capella version of his 2017 track 'About This Thing'
Developing artists stand to lose the most
In UMG's open letter, the conglomerate argued they were fighting for artists and songwriters everywhere, negotiating for fairer royalty payments from TikTok and ethical concerns over the flood of A.I. content and harassment. But some musicians aren't buying it.
Tones And I slammed UMG in a video post underscoring the hypocrisy of the situation.
"Can we just talk for a second about the fact that Universal are pulling all their artists' music from TikTok, like they're not the original 'ripper-offers' of artists anyway," said the 'Dance Monkey' hit-maker (who is signed with Sony Music in Austraila).
"They're just trying to claim now that they're the beaten, broke-down, poor artist that doesn't get paid enough when they're the ones that take the most, let's be honest."
This breed of public backlash is rare – there's an unspoken sentiment among the local music industry that ruffling the feathers of either UMG or TikTok is a bad career move. Especially for emerging artists beholden to the former, whose catalogue spans millions of songs.
"If they wanted to make a statement, they should've just pulled the biggest artist from TikTok with their consent but to take up-and-coming artists that need this platform off the biggest music marketing platform in the world to me is a shame and makes their job and lives and careers even tougher."
She concluded: "Maybe I haven't looked at it enough but does anyone else have answers to this situation? At the end of the day the artists are the only ones suffering. Again."
TikTok has changed how the industry works
The app has become a fundamental metric for measuring artist success and, in turn, how record labels operate.
The entire industry has a close eye on TikTok's rapidly changing trends, popular sounds, and dances for insights into how younger fans are discovering and consuming music. There's no denying the platform's ability to launch careers and offer huge signal boosts to songs in the zeitgeist.
A recent case in point: Sophie Ellis-Bextor's Murder On The Dancefloor, which was used in the film Saltburn and enjoyed a cultural resurgence on TikTok.
The renewed interest brought the 2001 single back into the pointy end of the Australian, American and British charts. (Interestingly, in January, the British singer signed with UMG – her old label – to record new music).
These success stories have fuelled increased demands on musicians to self-promote on the platform. High profile artists like Charli XCX, Halsey and FKA twigs spoke out about pressure from labels to market themselves and their music on TikTok – a practise some hated (although UMG artist Florence + The Machine came around to the idea.)
Unlike those established names, developing artists looking for their big break don't have the privilege of ignoring TikTok.
"What do the small fish of the ponds [do]?" South Australian artist George Alice raised in a recent series of TikTok videos.
Alice won triple j's Unearthed High competition in 2019, the same year TikTok launched Down Under, and signed with Universal label Loma Vista Recordings.
"But what do we do now when the other artists do have access to TikTok, the largest social media app that we have, and Universal artists don't?" she asks.
"Where do we promote our stuff? Is there a loophole yet? Will there be a loophole? Will our music be returning? There's many, many questions…"
She's right, but TikTok users are a creative bunch and some artists have found a way to continue sharing their music.
Ways around the UMG ban
Sydney singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andy Hopkins makes music as Hauskey.
Signed to Universal label Neon Records, he's found TikTok success with musical parodies as much as his original music, including a smartphone-fuelled send-up of Rusted Root's 1996 song Send Me On My Way that's racked up over 15 million views. But the sound has since been muted.
After alerting his followers to the UMG removal, Hauskey shared a follow-up video promoting his upcoming single with the caption: "Test to see if TikTok will mute slowed-down versions of my music too. Are you hearing this?"
We could.
This led to another (since-deleted) video featuring the slowed down teaser and a revealing protest: "Don't mute my art."
Another musician who has found a loophole is Lupa J, a classically trained violinist turned maker of "ugly techno & shiny power ballads" according to their profile.
As a sign of UMG's extensive reach, Lupa J's music is tied to Ingrooves / Virgin Music Group, "a digital distribution company that is owned by Universal" they explain in a TikTok post regarding finding out the release of her new music had been affected.
"I released a cover of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat on Friday, which was the day that everyone's music got taken down," they said in a video titled 'How to reupload your muted songs' (which has, also, since been deleted).
They continued: "Which was a nightmare considering that the whole reason I released it was because it did well on TikTok."
On the suggestion of somebody in the comments however, they discovered a workaround: "All you have to do is change the BPM of your song by a few notches and reupload it and it doesn't get detected by the copyright monsters."
The instructional video (and others like it) have since been removed, suggesting that somebody at UMG and/or TikTok has picked up on the loopholes.
There's no end in sight for UMG and TikTok's stoush, and its far-reaching consequences are still very unclear. One thing is clear, however: emerging musicians aren't willing to let it impact their chance to reach a mass audience, and they'll continue to innovate to do so, with or without conflict resolution.
Courtesy: ABC News
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