A Musician’s Guide to TikTok for Artists
Image credit: TikTok
TikTok’s promotional and analytics platform for artists is here and we’re here to help you to make the most of it on your music journey.
TikTok is one of the most important platforms that an artist can leverage. It offers a global audience of billions, fun and engaging ways to reach audiences, and a plethora of music discovery potential.
With so much potential to build an audience and get heard by new people, TikTok is a vital platform. With so much to discover and entirely new tools to expand your reach with, our guide will help you to navigate all the tools TikTok have to offer and the potential you can take advantage of.
Read on for our complete guide to using TikTok as a musician, or select the bit you’re most interested in from the contents below.
- Upload songs to TikTok
- Get to know your audience with TikTok analytics
- Customise your TikTok page
- Promote your music with TikTok’s tools
- Make money from TikTok
- Content you can post on TikTok
- Marketing tips for growth
- Learn more from TikTok
- Understanding copyright on TikTok
- Conclusion
- FAQs
Upload your music to TikTok to get featured in videos around the world
Artists can upload their music into TikTok’s library completely free. This allows creators making TikTok content all over the world to use your songs in their videos, giving the potential to go viral and become a trend. Many artists have found success after their songs blew up on TikTok.
Thankfully, it is completely free to upload unlimited songs to TikTok using RouteNote, keeping 85% of everything you earn or upgrading to keep everything. You will earn money every time your songs are used in a video, gaining new listeners along the way!
Why should I distribute to TikTok through RouteNote?
You can upload singles, EPs, or entire albums for free to the world’s top music platforms with RouteNote. Not only can you select TikTok to be added to one of the world’s biggest social platforms, with just a click you can also add your music to the world’s biggest streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.
Choose exactly which services you would like to upload to and in which territories – or just select them all! There is no charge to upload music through RouteNote, and you keep 85% of the earnings made across every platform. If you want to capitalise on your success and keep 100% of your earnings, you can easily pay a small upfront fee to upgrade to Premium at any time.
How to upload your music to TikTok for free:
- Create a free account at www.routenote.com
- Head to the Distribution tab and select Create New Release
- Upload your audio and format your release
- Select TikTok from the stores, and any other services you want to release your music to
- Once completed, your release will be sent to our team to verify
- Once approved, your song is headed to TikTok for use in videos around the world!
Unlock your insights with TikTok analytics
Analytics provide powerful information for artists, showing not just how their music and content is performing but offering unique insights into their audiences. Diving inside your performance can help you to identify where people like you most, the niche that you appeal to, and which of your songs are performing the best.
Leverage TikTok for Artists
In 2025, TikTok for Artists launched to provide artists with a one-stop shop full of information to bolster their efforts on TikTok. It allows artists to dive inside how their music is performing on TikTok, allowing artists and their team to develop an informed strategy.
Any user with a verified TikTok Artist Account can gain access to their TikTok for Artists platform in the regions where it is currently available, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and Japan. Once your music is on TikTok, claim your Artist Account by following our guide here.
Once you have access to TikTok for Artists, you can benefit from:
- Song Insights: Artists can see exactly how their music is being used on the platform, how many videos feature a given song, how many views it’s generating, and how those numbers evolve over time.
- Post Analytics: Breakdown of engagement metrics including video views, watch time, likes, comments, and shares.
- Fanbase Demographics: Access to detailed information about follower age, gender, language, and location to help artists tailor content and target promotions more effectively.
Learn more with RouteNote analytics
Uploading your music to TikTok through RouteNote unlocks insights about your music on RouteNote. You can view how well you are performing across all of the platforms you distribute to, and dive deeper inside each platform and individual release.
Your RouteNote analytics reveal your streams, plays, video features, and your earnings across every store. The Analytics tab from your RouteNote dashboard shows your data in handy visual charts for a quick glance, or you can download in-depth reports to see all there is to know.
Statistics and earnings are uploaded to RouteNote 45 days after the end of each month. So, for example, music performance across platforms generated in January would then be sent to RouteNote and available to view between the 15th-20th of March.
The recent launch of RouteNote Trends offers real-time, in-depth analytics for RouteNote users across Spotify, iTunes, and Apple Music. For real-time analytics on TikTok, artists can use TikTok for Artists.
How to use analytics to understand your audience and boost your career
Insights are interesting, allowing you to see what people are engaging with and how. But much more than that, they are an incredible tool to use in leveraging your music, content, and career to the next level.
The most beneficial thing you gain from analytics is an understanding of your audience. You can learn where people listen to your music the most, what age they are, and the content or platforms they are listening to your music on.
You can then use this to make informed decisions about where to put effort in with your music. For example, knowing exactly where people listen to your music the most can inform your tour plans, booking in at the places you know fans will be clamouring to see you.
It also allows you to strategically plan music releases and content. Knowing the platforms you are most likely to have an impact allows you to focus more efforts there. Even knowing the content that people are interacting with the most related to your music can influence your songwriting approach, to enhance the potential to be used in similar content in the future.
Ultimately, analytics empower you to make data-driven decisions that fuel your growth and connections with your fanbase.
Customize your TikTok page
Looking the part is essential to building your brand and letting viewers know exactly who you are. Especially as an artist on TikTok, you have access to a unique set of customisation options for your page so let’s get into it.
Profile Picture
This is the most important image you have to represent yourself with. It will appear in large on your profile page, sit alongside any videos you post, and show users who’s talking when you comment on content.
Choose something that both distinguishes you from others and represents who you are as an artist. That might simply be a professional photo of you or a logo that represents you as an artist. As long as it is unique to you and iconic to your brand then it will be great.
Bio
This is where you get to tell the world who you are and what you’re all about, in brief. Find a succinct way of summing up who you are as an artist, whether that’s a description of the music you make or something a little more quirky that matches your vibe.
You can also attach links to your profile, allowing you to send viewers on to your website or music with ease. Use PUSH.fm‘s Smart Links to compile your links in one place, so that new listeners can find you on their preferred platform.
Artist Account Extras
Once your music is uploaded to TikTok and you’ve claimed your Artist Account you gain access to unique additions to your profile. First of all, your profile will gain an ‘Artist’ tag showing off your position as a creative.
Perhaps the most notable addition to your page for artists is a music tab. This is a place where all of the songs you’ve added to TikTok’s music library are collated in one place.
From your music tab, viewers can easily preview your tracks, bookmark them for later, and use them in their videos. You can even pin your own video to the top of your song’s pages, enhancing views on your content and driving more viewers to your page.
TikTok’s Behind the Song feature allows you to take this one step further, with content tagged at the top of the song page allowing you to explore the song in more depth.
Reach new fans with promo tools
Once your music is live on TikTok through RouteNote and your profile is all set with your artist account, it’s time to start reaching people. TikTok have some nifty tools available to help you reach people and produce meaningful engagement.
Pre-Release
With the launch of TikTok for Artists this year comes this new tool to help artists build hype before the launch of a new release. Pre-Release helps artists to promote their upcoming releases on TikTok, with the option to pre-save them to Spotify or Apple Music with just a click.
With a Pre-Release page on TikTok, fans can see details about the album, which tracks are available and which ones are waiting to release, the full release data, as well as options to save them to their music libraries.
Fan Spotlight
Promote your music and give your fans a treat all at the same time. Fan Spotlight allows creators to highlight content created using their songs, pinning that content to the top of their music tab for up to a week.
This helps you to highlight the content you think really stands out whilst bolstering your relationship with your fans, helping to create lasting connections.
Add to Music App
Boost your plays on streaming services directly from TikTok by easily sending listeners your way. TIkTok have been expanding their ‘Add to Music App’ button to feature more music platforms, allowing viewers to save tracks they hear on TikTok with just a click.
Currently, users can use the ‘Add to Music App’ button to save songs to Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and Melon.
Make money from TikTok
All of these efforts help to build your profile, reach, and fanbase. But of course, you also need to make money to sustain your music career. Thankfully, there are a number of ways in which you can capitalise on your presence on TikTok.
Earn every time your music is used in TikTok videos
At the top of this post we discussed how you can upload your music to TikTok’s music library for free. Once your music is on TikTok, you will earn money every time your tracks are used in a video or other TikTok content.
This is especially powerful if your music starts going viral or becomes part of a trend; the more videos that use your music, the more you earn!
Sell on TikTok Shop
TikTok Shop offers creators a marketplace directly within the TikTok app, so that viewers can immediately jump from your page and content to explore what you’ve got on offer. It’s a fantastic place to sell physical music like vinyl and CDs, and merchandise like clothing and accessories.
It allows easy access to more eyes on your high-earning products and also allows artists to capitalise on popular posts, putting eyes on their shop. You can find out more about how artists are using TikTok Shop and how to set up your own here.
Subscriptions for superfans
Set up a subscription option on your TikTok to allow your most committed fans exclusive access to unique content and perks. A subscription allows your fans to pay for exclusive access to special badges, exclusive videos, exclusive livestreams, and customisable perks.
This is a fantastic way to earn extra revenue on a monthly basis, whilst also connecting with fans on a deeper level that fosters a longer lasting connection to the superfans who matter most.
TikTok subscriptions aren’t available to everyone. Creators must be at least 18 years old with a minimum of 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the past 30 days. There may also be some more requirements on application.
Livestream and earn money in the moment
TikTok’s LIVE function lets you go live and reach fans in real-time. TikTok have gamified how LIVE works, with rankings showcasing the top creators and a bunch of interactive features for fans to get involved with.
Games like Lucky Airdrop Box, Guessing Game, and Gift Vote allow fans to interact with creators in unique ways, investing in what questions they want answered, answering questions themselves, or sending “supplies” to a creator who is LIVE.
Longer form content and other monetisation options
TikTok are encouraging creators to share longer content, with rewards for creators who produce videos more than a minute long. Their Creator Rwards Program allows creators to collect rewards for their videos over a minute long. Additional Reward is another scheme from TikTok, offering creators extra payouts for great engagement on the best +1 minute videos.
Find out more about creator rewards and TikTok’s other content monetisation offerings here.
What content can artists post on TikTok
TikTok is of course famous for being the short-form, vertical video app. It built its legacy with vertical content, less than a minute long – making it the perfect home for quick, fun, and creative content.
Since then, TikTok has expanded its content to allow more variety and therefore more options for creators to reach and engage with fans and new viewers alike. Making use of different types of content is a great way to keep your profile active and experiment with new ways of reaching your audience.
Here are the content types you can post to TikTok:
- Videos (anywhere between 3 seconds and 30 minutes long)
- Photos (post 1 or more photos in a gallery which you can caption and set to music)
- Text (make a post that is just text, customising the size, style, alignment, font, and colour)
Grow your platform with TikTok marketing
TikTok is a fantastic platform to market your music and build your brand. Numerous artists have found success on TikTok, following different routes to success that has ultimately taken their music career to the next level.
There are a range of different routes you can take to success on TikTok. Here we’ll explore some of the different marketing techniques and tools you can use to boost your presence, build your audience, and maybe even blow up with viral success.
Content and virality
Creating content is a logical route to reaching audiences on TikTok, but it goes deeper than that. The types of content you create can change your results and your aim for your content will inform the types of content that want to focus on and when.
The content that you post as an artist will likely come under two brackets:
Promotional content: This is content that is about your brand, music, and you as an artist. Think teasers for new releases, posts promoting your upcoming concerts, content that speaks about you as an artist.
Shareworthy content: This is more about making entertainment and content that is going to appeal to new viewers, getting likes and shares that expand your reach. Think skits, motivational content, controversial takes, and trends. This is also where your chance to go viral with your own content sits
Find a healthy balance between these two kinds of content as shareworthy content is going to help build your audience and give you a bigger base to reach when it comes to building your music and yourself with promotional content. Let’s talk about some content ideas to get you started with.
Shareworthy content
- Challenges and trends: Take part in content types that are popular right now. TikTok trends are always kicking off, encouraging people to create their own content that fits into the idea.
- Inspirational content: Share things that have helped you on your journey or stories about perseverance. These are likely to resonate with people at large and reach people in similar situations.
- Relatable content: This is where you can have fun, posting jokes, skits, and memes. Humour is massive on TikTok and transcends genres and fanbase niches.
- Timely content: Taking part or joining the conversation around topics that are relevant right now can be a good way to get seen as people search for news, cultural trends, and current topics.
- Duets and stitches: Creating content that interacts with other peoples content and other creators is a great way to reach a new fanbase.
- Tutorials and how-tos: Offer advice, tips, and tutorials about the things you know as an artist, whether musical know-how or experiences of working within the music industry. These will reach a large musical audience, and who loves music better than musicians?
Promotional content
- Music: Share your new releases, tease upcoming singles, and talk about your music.
- Behind the song: Take fans behind your releases with content about what inspired it, the meanings of lyrics, and how you made it. You can use TikTok’s Behind the Song feature to make an impact here.
- Performance: Share clips from live shows, acoustic sessions, and shots of you recording to take fans and listeners inside the artist experience and showing different variations of the songs they love.
- Personal vlogs: Fans love connecting with artists and taking them inside your real life can deepen their connection to you as they get to know you and your life better.
- Fan interactions: Go live or do a Q&A answering your fans questions to interact with them on a level that feels personal and fosters a deeper connection
It’s important to remember that the content you post should remain relevant to you. Even if you’re trying to find the content that goes viral for you with some shareworthy content, if it’s totally unrelated to music, you as an artist, or your brand then it will be hard to equate that engagement to growing your music.
Get creative with your songs
So, by now you know the importance of uploading your music to TikTok’s library with RouteNote. This allows everyone to use your songs in their content, with viral potential and earnings from every share.
This also means that you can use your songs in your own content, getting creative with your promotion. A great example of this is Billie Eilish’s rollout for HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, in which she created a bunch of short videos set to her songs. These were like mini music videos, with different locations and styles to create traction in unique new ways for the same song.
When you use your song in your TikTok content, it also allows viewers to easily click through to find out more about your song, create their own content using it, or add it to their favourite music apps.
Cultivate your fanbase with PUSH.fm
Fantastic marketing tools rarely come easily, but PUSH.fm offer a range of incredible features to artists at no cost. Their range of tools can be used alongside TikTok to boost social growth, music streams, and fan interactions.
Let’s take a look at what they offer.
Smart Links: Provide a one-stop page for all of your socials, or your music across every platform. Smart Links allow you to put links to other websites, platforms, and pages onto one page. For example, link your artist page on all the platforms your music is available so that you can easily share that page on other platforms, sending fans to find your music on their chosen streaming service with one clean link.
Pre-saves: Get traction rolling on your upcoming releases and ensure no fan misses the launch. Pre-saves are a feature that allows fans to save your upcoming releases before they’re out, so that they’re automatically added to their libraries when release day comes.
Reward Links: Build your traction with an enticing reward to encourage interactions. Reward Links allow you to offer something exclusive like demos, sneak peeks of upcoming music, or whatever you like, in return for a like, follow, or share. This encourages fans to interact with your social platforms and build your brand.
Competitions: Offer up something really special to grow your pages. Competitions allow fans and users to enter into a chance to win a special prize of your choice in exchange for a social interaction that builds your social media pages.
Pay Links: Sell digital content with ease. Exclusive music releases, photos, videos, e-books and more! Pay Links let you set up an easy transaction page where your audience can pay the price you choose to unlock exclusive content.
Learn more from TikTok’s educational tools
With the launch of TIkTok for Artists comes a bunch of guides and tutorials to help artists along their journey to make the most of TikTok. They provide step-by-step guides for TikTok’s tools and features, providing information on how they work and how artists can use them to maximise their presence.
This and helpful support are available to artists within the TikTok for Artists hub. TikTok also publishes lots of advice and tips on their Newsroom site and other sites. You can find a full Artist Handbook that they published for guidance on making the most of their platform here.
Whilst we hope this guide has helped spur you along the way with your presence on TikTok, their guidance is always there for more.
A quick note about copyright
An artist’s work is theirs and should not only be treated with respect, but is legally protected. When you upload music to platforms, it helps to solidify the existence of your music as yours. It also provides legitimate ways for fans and creators to use your music in their content, ensuring you get paid.
Likewise, this means that all content uploaded to TikTok, or any other platform, must either be original or licensed for commercial use. We have more information on licensing music here.
Conclusion
TikTok presents a world of opportunity for growth and discovery among its vibrant landscape of content and tools. This guide provides essential knowledge to equip you with the tools to get your music out there on TikTok, making an impact.
We’ve also equipped you with the know-how to start understanding your performance, the features and tools available to you, how to approach content, promote it, and start monetising your successes.
By focusing on authentic content, engaging with trends, and leveraging platforms like RouteNote and PUSH.fm, you can effectively build your presence, foster deeper connections with fans, and drive your music career forward.
The key to success on TIkTok lies in consistent creativity, strategic engagement, and a willingness to experiment. So, go forth and let your music shine on one of the world’s biggest platforms!
FAQs
Answers to your biggest questions about TikTok and using their platform as an artist.
What is TikTok for Artists?
TikTok for Artists is the new integrated hub for artists with music uploaded to TikTok’s music library .
How can musicians use TikTok for Artists?
Artists must upload music to TikTok’s library to gain access to TikTok for Artists. They can upload music to TikTok for free at www.routenote.com. Artists must then gain a certified TikTok Artist Account to unlock TikTok for Artists.
Where can artists find their music analytics on TikTok?
Artists can view statistics on their own content the same as other users within the app. To gain insights into how their songs are being used in content across TikTok, they can gain access to TikTok for Artists which provides detailed insights about song performance, post views, and more.
What data can artists see in TikTok for Artists analytics?
TikTok for Artists shows individual song performance across content using an artist’s songs, post performance, and follower insights.
How do artists promote new music using TikTok for Artists tools?
TikTok for Artists has launched with a Pre-Release tool, allowing artists to promote their upcoming releases with a dedicated page to find out more about the release and pre-save the songs.
Can artists sell merch directly on TikTok Shop?
Yes, TikTok Shop allows eligible creators to sell merchandise and other products directly from the TikTok app within your very own TikTok Shop page.
How do musicians make money from TikTok?
Musicians can make money directly from their music on TikTok. Free uploads to TikTok via RouteNote allow creators to use their music in content, earning the artists revenue every time a song is used.
Does TikTok help artists get more streams on Spotify or Apple Music?
Yes, TikTok can help artist boost plays across other platforms. With an integrated Add to Music App button, users can easily add music they like from TikTok to their streaming libraries.
Where can artists find tutorials and guides on TikTok?
TikTok offer plenty of advice and support on their own websites to help creators maximise their reach and use features, including a dedicated space for learning materials within their TikTok for Artists hub. You can also find loads of tips and advice on boosting your reach and making the most of TikTok tools on the RouteNote Blog.
Is it free for artists to upload to TikTok?
Yes, artist can upload their songs to TikTok for free with RouteNote. RouteNote provides free music distribution to all of the world’s top music platforms and streaming stores.
What are the copyright rules for artists posting on TikTok?
You must ensure that you have the permissions to post any content that isn’t your own on TikTok. TikTok’s official music library allows the use of millions of songs legally, ensuring the artist gets paid.