Taylor Swift’s music is leaving TikTok

You can hear it in the silence

Universal Music Group has told TikTok that this is why we can’t have nice things and to shake it off — well, shake off their artists’ music, that is. After the two companies were unable to come to a music licensing agreement, TikTok users will no longer be able to use trending music by UMG artists, including massive stars like Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, and Drake. This will have a lot of repercussions, especially for social media managers who keep telling their clients to use trending audio. We’ve said from the get-go that focusing your content creation strategy solely around trending audio is a lot like trying to time the stock market as a day trader. Unless you’re willing to go all-in to watch it, you’re probably wasting your time. And now, the bucket of trending audio clips just got substantially smaller.  

What does this mean for you? This is the time to focus on making great content — not relying on music. Plus the data is on your side: we know that rarely (if ever) do the top performing videos even use trending music. So, while it’s sad, beautiful and tragic to not be able to Swift it up, you’ll get better results without it. Don’t sweat too hard.

🎥 What's Trending

After generating 12 million views, 75K+ shares, and more than 12K comments, the biggest question about this video is: Is this real?! 

Yes, we’re 99% convinced the whole thing is staged. But it’s still a great example of how you can stage a video to make relatable content in your field. Because whether or not it’s real doesn’t really matter in this context: it shows a relatable interaction (and something we’ve all probably thought, but never said aloud). 

If you’re icked out at all by the idea of “staging” content, remember — relatability isn’t about being something you’re not. It’s just about showing you understand your target audience. In this case, we can all relate to a cringey, awkward Zoom call. The more you can show you relate to those common struggles, the more your audience will trust you. .

Your takeaway: What can you easily stage and shoot with friends or colleagues to show expectations vs reality in your industry — in a way that will make people laugh? Think about how to take a situation everyone’s familiar with (i.e. Zoom calls) + a feeling everyone’s felt (not wanting to work in December!) and create a funny skit to show you get it.