Thanks to a new agreement between TikTok and music distribution service DistroKid, millions of independent artists will now be able to promote their music on TikTok Music, the recently launched subscription-based music streaming service. The deal also allows musicians to make their songs accessible on ByteDance-owned video editing app CapCut, which has about 490 million iOS and Android users.
Having a presence on TikTok Music and CapCut is significant for independent artists who promote their music on popular platforms in order to build an audience. While TikTok Music is only available in five countries so far, the new streaming service has the potential to be popular with TikTok’s billions of users who want to listen to and discover music. DistroKid’s music inventory joins the catalogs of major record companies already on TikTok Music, such as Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music.
“TikTok is one of the most powerful music discovery platforms in the world,” Philip Kaplan, DistroKid founder and CEO, said in a statement. “The expansion of this partnership to include CapCut and the Commercial Music Library makes it super easy for millions of musicians to make their music available in even more places, while TikTok’s new music streaming service provides further reach as it becomes available in more countries.”
DistroKid, which distributes around 30-40% of all the world’s music, initially teamed up with TikTok in 2019, becoming one of the first distributors to help up-and-coming artists get their music uploaded to TikTok.
DistroKid users receive royalties every time their songs are included in TikTok videos, per DistroKid’s support page. Members are paid through DistroKid, not TikTok. According to estimates online, TikTok pays artists three cents per video. DistroKid gives 100% of the earnings (aside from banking fees and taxes) to the artist. The company declined to share the total amount of revenue that members who opted into distribution to TikTok have earned.
DistroKid also helps musicians sell their songs on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, YouTube, Pandora, Amazon and iHeartRadio, among others.
Additionally, DistroKid’s catalog is available on TikTok’s Commercial Music Library (CML) for brands to use in ad campaigns. This was previously in beta, but with today’s announcement, the library is now “fully open” to all DistroKid artists, a DistroKid spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“We expect large numbers of artists to take advantage of the CML from this point forward,” the spokesperson said.
Over two million artists use DistroKid for its music distribution, monetization, promotion, metadata customization and storage services. The company recently acquired website builder Bandzoogle, giving users new e-commerce features to help them sell their albums.
The expansion of the partnership between TikTok and DistroKid comes a week after the short-form video app maker partnered with Tickets.com to help sell tickets for its first live music event called “In The Mix.”