How artists get paid on TikTok
If you’re wondering how to get paid royalties for your music on Tiktok, we’re here to answer your questions.
Why it’s worth being on TikTok as a musician?
It’s popular
TikTok is still growing exponentially and currently holds the title of the fastest growing social media platform. To date, it has approximately 500 million active users across 150 markets worldwide. It’s not only a great platform to promote your music and gain new followers, but it also allows you to earn a small amount of royalties from your music.
It’s easy
If you’re already signed up with a music distributor, the process of getting your music on TikTok is super simple and opens up another avenue for people to discover your music. It’s another channel for independent artists to get their music heard without any intervention from music labels or management.
RELATED: Get 7% off of your first year’s membership with DistroKid & Get your music on Tik Tok right now.
Music goes viral
TikTok has seen some pretty left field music by independent artists go viral and achieve success on streaming services. Of course, the chances of achieving real success in this way is about as likely as winning the lottery, but why not throw your music in the hat?
How much artists get paid in royalties
That depends on your distributor’s contract with TikTok. When someone uses a song in their video, you get paid a cut of TikTok’s subscription revenue. But the short answer is not a lot. The average TIkTok video is around 15 seconds long. When you consider that Spotify doesn’t pay a penny until a song is streamed for at least 30 seconds, it’s no surprise that TikTok don’t fork out much.
It’s also important to notice that you don’t get royalties each time your track is played, but rather each time someone uses a track in their video. That means that even if a video with your song has a million views, you’ll only get paid per video. TikTok is not a streaming service, by uploading your songs onto TikTok you are simply giving permission for your tracks to be used in TikTok subscribers’ videos.
Instead of thinking of TikTok primarily as a platform to earn money, you should consider it a platform to create fans and drive your new listeners to streaming services like Spotify or Deezer where you can make your money.
How to get paid on TikTok
As we’ve already covered, artists get paid through their music distributor (Distrokid, CDBaby etc.) If you are already signed up with a distributor, the process is very simple. Here’s a step by step guide on how to make sure existing songs are on TikTok via the DistroKid platform.
Sign in to your Distrokid profile;
Look for the TikTok icon (which looks like a white eighth musical note on a black background) next to each of your released tracks;
If it’s not there, click on the track you want to put onto TikTok;
Scroll down to Stores;
Click the Add to More Stores link;
Select TikTok and hit Add, and you’re done.
For a guide showing you exactly how to make sure your music is on TikTok via the Distrokid platform, check out our YouTube video as part of our Getting Music Heard series here.
