How are TikTok royalties calculated?

As TikTok continues to grow in popularity and seemingly spawning music stars overnight, more and more artists are becoming curious about how their royalties are calculated on the platform.

Guest contribution by Horus Music

As TikTok has become more and more popular worldwide in recent years, we are pleased to offer our customers the opportunity to distribute their music on this platform. With the option to set preview times to highlight your catchy chorus so followers can sync their lips, or to create on-trend dance routines, TikTok’s unprecedented growth in recent years has made it a hugely popular platform which is a great opportunity for you to reach your audience.

The big question that many of our customers ask is, “How are my TikTok royalties calculated?”

Compared to other major platforms like Spotify, which pay per total number of streams, TikTok works differently when calculating license fees and the base calculation based on the number of videos made with your music, rather than the number of times the video was played. This can often get confusing when you compare royalty billing to other stores. It is therefore important to understand that the main difference here is that large numbers of watches are not the same as royalty payments.

TikTok royalties are based on market share, not metric views. TikTok uses a so-called creation to calculate the market share. A creation is when a user selects a release from the Horus Music catalog from the TikTok library to create a video. Users can then create their own creations, inspired by existing creations, all of which lead to new creations. To put it simply, every time a user chooses to use your music to create a video, it generates a license fee.

With that in mind, it’s important to remember that other users choose your music for their video, and not the 200,000 views you may have. When we think back to those Tik Tok classics like “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion, the millions of users who create dance videos for the track are a great example of how royalties are generated by a creation.

If you have any questions or questions about your royalties and TikTok royalties in particular, please contact the sales team at [email protected] and they will be happy to assist you.

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