It’s becoming more apparent with each passing day that TikTok is about to get shut down by the U.S. Government for any one of a variety of crimes like it has been in India and other countries.  Which means that they are a perfect candidate for an “NMPA Special” which is where a handful of insiders decide on the terms and a pool of money is paid by the infringer to the NMPA for what amounts to a promise not to sue the infringer by the insiders and whatever useful idiots the NMPA can get to opt in to their deal.  (Or at least the deal they tell you about–and remember that some running dogs are more equal than others.)

Then some impenetrable claiming portal is set up for the average dog to “claim” a share of a revenue pool they had nothing to do with negotiating while being forced to give up any rights to sue (because the last thing that the NMPA wants is getting shown up again by a David Lowery, Melissa Ferrick, Randall Wixen or anyone represented by Richard Busch), and then the money just kind of disappears.  The amount of the pool is always so low it makes you wonder if that’s all there is, but in any event it has a distorting effect on the market place to drive down the rates paid to songwriters.

In a world where Cox Communications, a stupid but largely legitimate company, pays $1 billion for copyright infringement on a handful of copyrights, TikTok should pay $1 billion to get a meeting.  And if the FBI is right that TikTok is a front for the Chinese Communist Party, they could easily pay $1 billion for a meeting.  Anyone want to bet the over/under that the NMPA settlement is less than $1 billion?

How much the NMPA gets to keep out of the gross on the front end or the unclaimed after the claiming period expires is never disclosed and as you will see, the NMPA deal with TikTok, like all other NMPA deals, only applies to NMPA members.  So if you want to participate, you most likely will have to join the NMPA and pay a fee (sometimes based on market share).  And as came up in The MLC designation, The NMPA members may have a large market share of revenue but not necessarily on the number of songs.

Here’s the twist:  TikTok has no way to track what music has been used, much less account for it.   TikTok has no Content-ID type technology or control over what music is used so has no way to count or monitor what uses are made of which songs. So unless that gets fixed,  it’s a bit unclear exactly what you would be claiming from the NMPA’s claiming portal  Based on the NMPA’s YouTube and Spotify settlement portals, this one is almost certainly going to be absolute shite.

So what is the deal?  According to MusicAlly:

The deal “accounts for TikTok’s past use of musical works and sets up a forward-looking partnership” according to the announcement.

“This new partnership will give NMPA members the ability to opt-in to a licensing framework that allows them to benefit from their works included on TikTok and is effective retroactively as of May 1, 2020.”

The deal comes a day after TikTok announced a licensing deal with independent distributor Believe, and its TuneCore subsidiary.

“We are pleased to find a way forward with TikTok which benefits songwriters and publishers and offers them critical compensation for their work,” said NMPA boss David Israelite.

“Music is an important part of apps like TikTok which merge songs with expression and popularise new music while also giving new life to classic songs. This agreement respects the work of creators and gives them a way to be paid for their essential contributions to the platform.”

That might be true–but remember, there’s nothing in it for anyone who is not an NMPA member.  And a lot of people are not NMPA members regardless of what they tell judges.  So what happens to the great unwashed who are not NMPA members?  Unclear, but NMPA has likely set the market rate for TikTok settlements, so unless you plan on suing, they’ll just jam that deal down your throat.  Which works out well for TikTok.

But some lobbyist at TikTok has a friend when they are in need.