Taylor Swift is just a few days away from releasing her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, and fans have spotted that her music returned to TikTok.
A few months ago, Universal Music Group (to which Swift is signed) removed all of their artists’ catalogs from the social media platform, citing issues with royalty payments and differing opinions about AI, according to Variety.
Now, Swift appears to be one of the first to have their music return on the site — seemingly because she owns her master recordings. Other artists like Ariana Grande, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, and more still do not have any songs listed for users to add to their videos.
Even with the TikTok ban from UMG, this also hasn’t stopped fans by finding loopholes, whether it’s singing covers of the songs, speeding up the audio, or uploading the original as a hidden sound (and praying it doesn’t get removed).
As someone who has seen videos with great Swift songs become audioless, it is nice to see that this has been reversed. This means she can also do more promotional stuff on the app in time for the album’s release. And hopefully, this will become the case with the rest of the major UMG signees, along with rising stars who rely on TikTok to grow their audiences.
The Tortured Poets Department is out 4/19 via Republic Records. Find more information here.