Tag: tiktok marketing

Categories
Industry News News

How TikTok Royalties Are Calculated

tiktok royalties

TikTok is the premiere music discovery platform on the planet, but how are artists making money?

Exposure doesn’t pay the bills. As much as musicians enjoy any promotion they receive from a site or platform, money talks. Money makes the world go round, and it plays a role in the music business. It seems every other conversation in entertainment these days involves streaming royalties or a lack thereof. But what about TikTok royalties? The social media giant welcomes over 100-million users every month, most of whom spend hours on the app watching videos that include sound. Do artists get paid? If so, how?

For starters, yes, TikTok does pay artists for use of their music.

In comparison to other major platforms such as Spotify who pay per total number of streams, TikTok operates differently when calculating royalties and bases calculations on the number of videos made using your music, as opposed to the number of times the video is watched. That can often become confusing if you are measuring the way royalties are worked out against othersservices, so it’s important to understand the main difference here is that big view counts don’t equal large royalty payments.

To put it another way, the quantity of videos matters more than the total view count. One hundred videos with no views using a specific sound will generate more money than a single video with one million views. The views don’t matter.

TikTok royalties are based on market shares rather than metric views. To calculate the market shares, TikTok uses what is called “a creation.” A creation is when a user selects a release from TikTok’s library to make a video. Users can then make their own creations inspired by existing creations, all amounting to new creations. So, to put this simply, every time a user decides to use your music to make a video, this generates royalty.

And how much is a video worth? According to estimates online, TikTok royalties were close to $0.0067 per video using your music in 2018 and moved to $0.030 per video in June 2019. Based on these figures, ten thousand uses of this music would generate approximately $300.

Of course, this information is likely to change, TikTok is an evolving platform, and the conversation around royalties is unending. The company could easily choose to approach artist payments from a different position or price point overnight. When they do, we’ll cover it, so make sure you’re following Haulix on Facebook and Twitter.

Categories
Industry News News

11 Music Marketing Ideas For TikTok And Instagram [Video]

The key to music promotion on TikTok and Instagram is finding multiple ways to push the same material. We can help.

Video is the future of music promotion, and the future of video exists on TikTok. The massive social media platform has an engaged global audience who look to the video-sharing platform to discover their new favorite creators, movies, books, television shows, and music. Artists who capture TikTok users’ attention see an enormous boost to their streaming numbers. That kind of action is known to turn heads throughout the music business, and we can help you get it.

In the latest Music Biz update, host James Shotwell breaks down eleven proven music promotion tactics for TikTok. He explains how artists can approach single promotion from various angles and the value of each. He also shares how many of these ideas will work for Instagram’s Reels feature.

PLEASE NOTE: The suggestions made in this video are most applicable to artists with recorded music. Those still writing their next hit may find the tips in this video useful, but for the best results, we recommend waiting until your music is widely available to the general public.

Don’t have time for the video? We’ve got you covered:

  • Lip-synch your new song in a studio space to offer users a glimpse at the creative process.
  • Lip-synch your new song while doing an activity that helps emphasize the aesthetic of your track. If you wrote a song about late-night drives, then shoot your video while driving at night. If you wrote it for a party, lip-synch at a gathering of close friends. Treat this clip like a short music video.
  • Use your new song as the sound for your clip and post captions of the lyrics on-screen to help people learn how to sing along at future concerts.
  • Post videos about the story behind the song. Tell your audience why you wrote the song, what you hope they take from it, etc.
  • While using the new song as the sound of your video, post behind-the-scenes footage of the writing and recording process. Fans LOVE to see what goes into creating a track.
  • Record a live acoustic (stripped) version of the track. That will showcase the song in a new light. It also helps emphasize your raw talent.
  • Record the acoustic (stripped) version and use the sound to create new versions of the previously mentioned lip-synch videos. Again, this allows you to showcase the message and energy of the track in exciting new ways.
  • Use both an early demo of your new song and the final mix in a single video to showcase how your creativity evolves.
  • While using your music as the sound on a video, showcase your latest merch and tell fans where they can buy the items they want. Emphasize the limited quantities available, and be sure to tie the merch to chosen sound whenever possible.
  • Instead of lip-synching over your video, share performance clips of the instruments involved in the song. For example, you can make a video of your drumming playing the chorus to the track.
  • Leverage fan-generated content. Duet, stitch, and critique fan videos. Download their clips and re-upload them to your account (while giving credit) to promote and engage with your community.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

Categories
Artist Advice Editorials Industry News News

2021 TikTok Growth Strategy For Artists [Video]

TikTok is the leading platform in music discovery right now, and we can help you build the following needed to get your next release heard.

Nobody anticipated the way TikTok would revolutionize the music industry. In a few short years, the video-sharing app has catapulted hundreds of songs onto the charts and helped countless artist elevate their career. It’s also become one of the most widely used social media platforms on the planet, with more than 1-billion downloads worldwide and daily users that number in the hundreds of millions.

As soon as Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road” to pop culture by storm, industry executives everywhere began flocking to TikTok in hopes of finding the next big thing. Artists, seeing how the once unknown rapper became a household name, followed suit.

But time has taught us that many musicians still don’t know how to build a following on TikTok. Going viral on the app is not as easy as some make it seem, and getting your song to takeoff is even more challenging. For every artist who cuts through the noise, hundreds, possibly thousands, do not.

You and your music deserve to be heard. TikTok can launch artists from any genre into the global spotlight, but you cannot achieve that success level through promotional posts alone. TikTok’s algorithm is brilliant, and overcoming it requires active participation in the app’s massive community.

In this Music Biz update, host James Shotwell shares five growth strategies for musicians. These tips are easy to implement and can make a massive impact on reach and engagement in as little as one month.

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Start your one-month free trial today and gain instant access to the same promotional tools used by BMG, Concord, Rise Records, Pure Noise Records, and hundreds more. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

Categories
Industry News News

TikTok May Soon Allow Videos Up To Three-Minutes Long [VIDEO]

With the most global downloads of any social media platform, TikTok is looking to evolve in new and exciting ways during 2021.

It’s good to be the best. TikTok is the largest social media platform on the planet. Every day, thousands of clips from the popular service are shared on competing platforms, and many of those videos earn millions of views. Kombucha Girl? That was TikTok. Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road”? TikTok gave us that as well. The career of “Mood” rapper 24kgoldn? TikTok heard him first.

The threat of bans hasn’t stopped the company’s growth, and many believe 2021 will be TikTok’s biggest year yet. Now, rumors are exploding only that TikTok will abandon its one-minute time limit for clips in preference of longer content. A recent report says the company is experimenting with allowing users to create content up to three-minutes in length. There is no release date at this time, and additional details are scarce, but it seems clear the TikTok will be evolving in the new year.

With this Music Biz News update, host James Shotwell explains the latest rumors. He also weighs the pros and cons of such changes, as well as the surprising reasons Bytedance may be looking to evolve. For more music industry news and perspective, subscribe!

Brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Join today and receive a one-month free trial of the same service Bruce Springsteen, Slipknot, blink-182, and thousands more trust to share their music with the press. Visit http://haulix.com/signup​ for details.

Categories
Artist Advice Editorials Industry News News

Marketing Lessons From Billie Eilish and Her “Secret” TikTok Account [VIDEO]

The biggest star on the planet is taking the fastest growing social media platform by storm in an unusual and undeniably authentic way.

Billie Eilish did two incredible things last week. First, she released her new single, “Therefore I Am,” and immediately topped every song chart she qualified for worldwide. The track and its accompanying video earned millions of streams and mentions online, all of which reaffirmed Eilish’s immense celebrity.

The second thing received far less press, at least at first. On the same day “Therefore I Am” dropped, Billie Eilish posted her first TikTok video. The clip arrived without a press release or the use of her music. The account didn’t feature her name, and it was not verified when the first videos went live. She didn’t even use hashtags to gain attention. It was just Billie being herself for anyone lucky enough to see it, but news of the account soon got out.

It didn’t take long for Billie’s account to amass millions of followers and millions of hearts (the TikTok equivalent to Facebook Likes). Eilish did not post about her account anywhere, but the clips were undeniably authentic. The account wasn’t a diehard fan re-sharing content from other channels, but Billie herself making silly clips specifically for TikTok. That kind of content win is the stuff that social media companies’ dreams are made of, and it seemingly happened without pressure from Eilish’s team or TikTok leadership.

But why was it such a success? Rumors abound that Eilish and her team worked with TikTok to ensure the clips reached more people than the typical anonymous new account, but those allegations cannot be substantiated. The more likely answer is a simple one: People like what Eilish is doing with her channel.

When you look at Billie’s TikTok account, which is found under the username CoochieDestroyer5, you directly access the music superstar without the fake glitz and glamour of the music business. Eilish is making content for her fans using her cellphone and her personality. There are no directors or editors, or costume designers. More than any other platform, TikTok gives Eilish’s fans direct access to their favorite artist in the most unfiltered way possible. It’s deepening the connection and relatability of someone who lives a life that is unlike anyone else. It’s humanizing but also fun and weird.

In case it’s not clear, the big lesson here is that marketing today is all about connection. Forget trying to sell your merch or getting people to click a link. Before those things can happen, artists must first forge a relationship with people online. They need to become someone or some group that people want to see in their timelines. They need to be viewed as friendly, relatable, and above all else, human. If musicians can accomplish that, then they’re miles ahead of everyone else.

Categories
Industry News News

TikTok Lives! Inside The Deal Saving A Social Media Giant [VIDEO]

Just days after the US Department Of Commerce announced plans to ban TikTok, the social media app lives on thanks to a potential sale.

TikTok is fully operational in the United States as of today, September 22. The social media app, which was set to be banned last Sunday, was spared its untimely fate thanks to a last-ditch effort from Oracle and Wal-Mart to purchase the company over the weekend. President Trump has approved the sale in principle, but conflicting reports from the companies involved leave many questions unanswered.

According to Variety, virtually every person and every company involved in the acquisition of TikTok disagrees on the terms of this deal. The deal approved by Trump allegedly makes Oracle the cloud provider and host of TikTok. That means the company will move its data stateside, and that U.S. citizens will control the data.

Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, whose Beijing headquarters are at the center of the platform’s controversy, disagrees.

What isn’t disputed: Oracle plans to take a 12.5% stake, and Walmart will get 7.5% in pre-IPO equity in TikTok Global. The new company will be based in the U.S. and run on the Oracle Cloud platform. ByteDance will continue to maintain control over the A.I. algorithms that power the TikTok app’s video recommendations (and which ByteDance uses for the similar Douyin app, available in China). The deal values TikTok at as much as $60 billion, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

Trump previously claimed the only adequate deal would be one where a US-controlled TikTok. ByteDance claims it will retain majority control, as it believes the remaining 80% of pre-IPO equity belongs to them, but that might not be true.

To make sense of this, Music Biz News host James Shotwell put together a video explaining how we got here and what may happen next.

Categories
Industry News News

#TikTokBan: The End is Here [Video]

President Trump's executive order against Bytedance-owned TikTok goes into effect this Sunday, September 20.

President Trump’s executive order against Bytedance-owned TikTok goes into effect this Sunday, September 20.

The US Department of Commerce announced on Friday, September 18, that the maintenance and distribution of TikTok in US app stores would be prohibited starting Sunday, September 20.

Friday’s news follows a series of threats from the Trump administration toward TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, and other Chinese-owned tech companies. The president began that such bans would happen in early August alongside allegations that the Chinese government could use the data collected by tech companies against the United States.

Starting Sunday, September 20, TikTok will disappear from both the Apple and Google app stores. Consumers who already have the app will still be able to access its content and create new videos until November 12. No further updates will be accessible, which may cause a degradation of service over time.

“The only real change as of Sunday night will be [TikTok users] won’t have access to improved apps, updated apps, upgraded apps or maintenance,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday morning on Fox Business.

“Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Ross. “At the President’s direction, we have taken significant action to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data, while promoting our national values, democratic rules-based norms, and aggressive enforcement of U.S. laws and regulations.”

ByteDance may save TikTok’s presence in the states by making a deal with an American-owned corporation to house data stateside. Several corporations have expressed an interest in such partnerships, and some have floated the idea of purchasing the platform altogether. As of this posting, no deals have been made.

The complete loss of TikTok would be a major blow to music discovery at a time when the entertainment business is already in dire straights. The platform has launched dozens of careers in recent years, including breakout talent such as Lil Nas X and ppcocaine.

Additional updates on TikTok are likely to surface in the coming weeks. Follow Haulix on Facebook and YouTube for news.

Categories
Industry News News

Instagram Reels Is An Underwhelming TikTok Knockoff [Video]

The latest feature from one of the world’s biggest social media platforms is a complete waste of time and design. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Instagram seized a golden opportunity when it released Reels, its direct competitor to TikTok, in early August. Arriving just as President Trump was unveiling plans to ban TikTok (a decision that may never happen), Reels offers content creators a new place to make and share looping videos set to music or original audio recordings. It’s the latest example in a long line of Insta-updates that borrow proven ideas from other platforms, but unlike Stories and Filters, Reels is DOA.

Reels may have the look and feel of TikTok and a large potential user base, but it suffers from being a small part of a much larger platform. To find Reels, users must first open Instagram, navigate to their explore page, and click on the Reels option at the top of the page. That is two more steps than TikTok, and the problems continue from there.

TikTok users have two feeds of content two choose from; one that they curate themselves through follows, and another that is generated by the platform’s algorithm. Reels only offers one feed, and it combines algorithmic predictions with what users want with the people they follow. You cannot follow someone in Reels alone, so any Reels creators someone follows will have photos and videos from those creators appear in the user’s main Instagram feed.

Then there is an issue with the length of Reels clips. TikTok allows users to make their content up to one-minute long, but Reels limits clips to fifteen seconds. That may be enough time to do a quick dance or lip-sync, but it places a seemingly unnecessary cap on creative expression.

Many of Reels’ most significant flaws stem from a core misunderstanding of why people use Instagram as opposed to TikTok. Instagram is a social network people use to give friends, family, and followers a glimpse into their lives. It is, in many ways, a carefully-curated glimpse into someone’s private life (or the life they want you to believe they lead). TikTok, on the other hand, is made with entertainment in mind. Most users don’t share personal content, just memes. It’s about making people laugh or smile or momentarily forget about whatever is bothering them. As the kids say, “it’s not that deep.”

However, all hope is not lost. Reels could become a go-to platform for creatives, but to do so, Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, need to reconsider their goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to entertain, and if so, how do you make that clear? Give users the ability to curate a Reels-specific following and make it easier to find the app’s feature. Facebook could even take things one step further and make Reels a standalone app for content creation that allows for cross-posting to Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram has built a large part of its business by stealing ideas that other services made famous. Its popular stories feature, which is the most used part of the app, is a variation of a similar tool that Snapchat brought to the public years prior. Similarly, though with less exciting results, IGTV is a variation of YouTube. These features both had their fair share of growing pains, but the longterm value is worth the effort needed to make them right. Reels could be the next ‘borrowed’ idea that hits big, but it’s not there-at least, not yet.

Categories
Industry News News

How Songs Go Viral on TikTok [Video]

TikTok promotes itself as a platform where creatives can become stars overnight, but how exactly does that work?

TikTok has quickly become the premier music discovery platform on the planet. More than half a billion people use TikTok every month, and they are helping raise a new generation of talent that may otherwise never have a chance at success. Lil Nas X is perhaps the best example of TikTok’s power, but since “Old Town Road” became a global sensation, more than a dozen additional artists have come out of nowhere to take the app’s community by storm.

But how does that happen? Algorithms play a part, of course, but how does a relatively unknown talent captivate an audience of millions in a matter of days or weeks with a single song? Could it really be talent alone?

Lol. No. Of course.

A recent feature from Rolling Stone found that the answer to this modern mystery is as old as the music business itself. Regardless of all the technological advances of TikTok boasts and its incredibly inventive userbase, money is the common trait amongst every success story. Artists and labels alike are pouring thousands of dollars into each song promotion. Influencers receive cash to create clips that inspire their millions of followers to imitate their behaviors and continue using a specific song or sound.

The biggest moneymaker on TikTok is Charli D’Amelio, a twenty-something that demands around $30,000 per song promotion. Other influential creatives charge between $2,000 and $20,000 per placement, but again, there is no guarantee of success.

In this episode of Music Biz, host James Shotwell demystifies how songs succeed on TikTok with a straightforward answer that will not appeal to everyone. He also expresses caution for artists that may be considering influencer marketing for their next single. Check it out:

Music Biz is brought to you by Haulix, the music industry’s leading promotional distribution platform. Sign up today and receive your first month free. Visit http://haulix.com/signup for details.

Categories
Industry News News

The Best Songs On TikTok Right Now (April 2020)

TikTok is growing faster than ever thanks to Coronavirus, and artists on the platform are witnessing a surge in engagement.

If you thought TikTok was the latest in a long series of ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ social media platforms – think again. The video-sharing app is growing in leaps and bounds, especially in light of COVID-19. The novel coronavirus is forcing everyone to stay inside, so anyone not yet converted to the world of TikTok now has plenty of time to assimilate.  

Artists on TikTok are benefitting from the rise in content and new users in significant ways. After Lil Nas X, Ashnikko, and Blanco Brown took off in 2019, the latest crop of talent building massive followings on the platform is more diverse than ever. There are newcomers to mainstream pop, such as Jack Harlow and Doja Cat, as well as countless independent musicians whose current level of success is owed almost entirely to the TikTok community. Still, others are the kind of bizarre talent that only sees recognition because the internet loves weird things.  

Some songs succeed on TikTok after users create action-based trends with a specific track. One recent example of that would be Powfu’s single, “Death Bed (Coffer For Your Head).” Users have paired the song with clips of themselves expressing their previously unspoken feelings for close friends. Check it out:

@sofie.loehmann

Seems a bit cheezy 🍕 ##AfterMyCoffee ##shecandoit ##normalpeople ##UltraSmoothMoves ##fyp

♬ death bed (coffee for your head) – Powfu feat. beabadoobee

The majority of TikTok users are young. 66% of the app’s audience is below thirty years old, and many of its most famous users are younger than twenty. More than 800 million people use TikTok every month. The average user spends 52-minutes on the app per day. That engagement is exposing people to a lot of music, and that discovery is propelling many unknown artists and groups to success.

Even more impressive is TikTok’s engagement stats. TikTok has the highest follower engagement rate in social media. The average post receives engagement from 8-9.5% of the account’s following. That figure doesn’t count the engagement on posts found by users browsing the platform’s many video feeds, which are far easier to navigate than Twitter lists or Instagram’s ‘For You’ page.

Still, finding the next big thing by scrolling TikTok posts can be difficult. The app currently has no chart system in place, so the only way to understand what songs are popular is to watch a lot of videos.

Every label and artist would love to experience the level of viral success TikTok can provide, but users of the platform tend to enjoy hip-hop and pop music more than any other genre. The artists seeing the most success on the app often blur genre lines while delivering infectious and straightforward melodies. As a result, a great hook or strong opening can mean more than the quality of a song overall.

We cannot tell you how to make TikTok users fall in love with your music. We are researching that topic, but so far, the best advice anyone has given us is to ensure your songs are as immediately catchy as possible. To further prove this point, we took the most popular songs on the platform right now (April 1, 2020) and put them into a Spotify playlist. Check it out:

Exit mobile version