Acapella, Alarm Tones & ‘Fluffing a Duck’: How TikTokers Are Working Around the UMG Ban

If you’ve scrolled through TikTok recently, you might have noticed that it sounds different than it did a few months ago.

Users have gotten creative with their sound choices. They’ve posted edits to a song from the children’s cartoon Little Einsteins, the Spongebob theme song,  music from the quiz platform Kahoot, Kevin MacLeod’s royalty-free track “Sneaky Snitch” and the 20th Century Fox theme. There have been dances set to classical music, and the iPhone ringtone. Users have even posted screen recordings of what it’s like scrolling through their feeds, one with the text, “This is the funniest era of TikTok to ever exist.” 

It’s all because Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok failed to reach a new licensing agreement after the previous one expired on Jan. 31. UMG issued an open letter on Jan. 30 citing concerns over AI, compensation, harassment and copyright infringement on the social media app. TikTok responded in a statement, saying, “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” Music credited to songwriters signed to Universal Music Publishing Group disappeared at the end of last month following a grace period.

TikTok has proved vital to artists, breaking new artists’ careers and causing songs to go viral, but the removal of UMG’s catalog has hit social media creators hard, too. Kenna Dean, 22, a dance creator with 1.7 million followers on the app, is one of many TikTokers who found out her videos with music by Universal artists – including one with 1.5 million likes – had been muted.

“It was actually really disappointing, because it’s time you put into those videos,” Dean says. “You have comments on them, and you have other people who have done your dances out there. And then all of that is just gone, which was alarming.” 

Dean had plans to film a dance collaboration with two other creators, @karaleighcannella and @jaedengomezz, on the same day the catalog was pulled. “All of the dance creators, we kind of woke up and were like, ‘What do we dance to?’” Dean says. They stumbled across Niana Guerrero’s viral dance (which now has over 14 million likes) to Kevin MacLeod’s “Fluffing a Duck” – a royalty-free track – as well as a dance to the Samsung alarm tone. “I just thought it was so funny,” says Dean, who jumped on both trends.

UMG is just one portion of the music industry. There are, of course, many artists who are not affiliated with Universal, or any label at all, and that music is still available for creators to use on TikTok – and a lot of users have opted to simply use the music at their disposal. Dean pointed out that she’s trying to use more songs by independent artists. 

“I think it is a chance that we can prove that we are also worth listening to,” says independent artist and creator Charisse Chua. “Us not being signed doesn’t stop us from still creating good music and releasing it out there.” Earlier this month, Chua, 19, posted a clip of her song “would you take it all back?” with the caption, “umg songs might be gone [from] tiktok but mine aren’t!!” 

But it’s still a challenge to get music to reach more viewers. “I expected there to be a lot more interaction than there was,” Chua says, adding that there are a lot of artists trying to use the app to boost their music. 

Many TikTokers have also turned to covers as a way to replace the missing songs. In one video, creators danced to a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” from the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Another user made a video featuring medieval-style instrumental versions of songs  that got 1.9 million likes, with the audio being used in over 700 videos.

Glee covers are also popular, with a clip of the Glee Cast version of “Rose’s Turn,” uploaded by @girlyteengirl123, currently trending on the app, having been used in over 300,000 videos and reaching No. 3 in Billboard’s TikTok Top 50 chart. A remix of Ice Spice’s “Think U The Shit (Fart)” in the style of the Nintendo character Toad was uploaded to TikTok on Jan. 26 – just days before the licensing agreement expired – and has since gotten 2 million likes, having been used in close to 9,000 videos, often as a joking substitute for the original song. And some users took matters into their own hands, recording covers themselves.

“I just thought, ‘Well, I’m a singer. I might as well just do my own acapella version,’” Vicky Ntamag, 25, a musician and dancer, says. She began uploading her covers to TikTok after the dispute, starting with a cover of Nicki Minaj’s “FTCU” and responding to a few requests in her comments. Her cover of ATEEZ’s “Crazy Form” was used over 200 times and her acapella version of RIIZE’s “Talk Saxy” was used in upwards of 2,770 videos. RIIZE even posted a video dancing to Ntamag’s cover that now has a million likes.

At the time Ntamag posted the cover, the original song was still available on TikTok (RIIZE is signed to RCA which is under Sony Music Entertainment) but it has since been taken down as the song falls under Universal Publishing. RIIZE posted a video using Ntamag’s cover with the text “don’t worry everyone… we still have this sound!”

Some of these covers are gaining real traction – and attention from bigger artists. Mikael Arellano’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “Bejeweled” got 1.5 million likes, with OneRepublic commenting, “Can you help us too..” Arellano then posted a video singing the band’s “Counting Stars,” and OneRepublic used the audio in two videos uploaded to its account. Conan Gray, who recently told Rolling Stone, “I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting acapella covers happening from UMG artists until this is settled,” sang over a clip of his own music video. 

“The TikTok community is really strong,” Ntamag says. “And we help each other with the songs. That’s why I’m taking the requests, because some of them want to use them for their edits, or there’s certain songs that were taken off that I’m going to make an acapella [version] for, just to help my fellow TikTokers.”

The communal aspect drives TikTok. Building upon a previous joke is how memes function and audio sharing is integral to that. Participating in and even viewing trends forms the shared experience of being on TikTok, and certain sounds define eras of the app – even if those sounds happen to be TV show themes and ringtones to capture the beginning of February. Soon after the dispute, TikTok seemed to shift away from some of the more creative options towards just using the music that was still available on the app, although covers and royalty-free tracks remain popular.

“We were all a little bummed when we saw that the music was taken off,” says Ntamag. “But I feel like it’s also an opportunity that we can use to share who we are and how funny we are and what kind of music we make and how creative we can be.”