TikTok is an absolute behemoth of a social media platform. But how much does TikTok Pay?
According to Business of Apps,
TikTok snowballed into the most popular app in 2019 and 2020. It was downloaded 693 million times in 2019 and 850 million times in 2020. Even though it only launched in 2017, TikTok was the seventh-most downloaded app of the 2010s
Business of Apps
It’s safe to say TikTok’s user base is unbelievably large at this point, and it has no signs of slowing down, despite the old dogs attempting to compete with the likes of Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. The one question on most music and/or video creator’s minds are “that’s great, but how much does TikTok pay?”.
How Much Does TikTok Pay Musicians?
If your music has been distributed through one of a handful of services that support releases directly to TikTok, you stand a chance of earning some royalties for your music being on TikTok. But it doesn’t quite work in the traditional way, in fact it might leave you quite frustrated at the end of this article.
Monetization for music creators is very different to Spotify, Apple Music, or even YouTube. They have decided against paying musicians per “stream” of their song, a stream being a view on a TikTok that uses their music. They have instead opted to compensate musicians (effectively) per video using their song…
This is because TikTok pays musicians based on their “market share”, meaning the number of “creations”, or videos made, is what decides how much you earn. This means there’s little to get excited about if a TikTok using your song gets a million views. The only number that matters for monetizing on TikTok is how many videos have been made using your music.
Now that you know this, I can show you the data. In the same way you can (roughly) work out how much Spotify pays per stream, you can also work out how much TikTok pays per “creation”.
In April 2022, a single video creation using your song would earn you… $0.000637205700.
This may vary slightly from person to person and from month to month, but this is exactly how much I was paid per video creation in the month of April 2022.
How Much Does TikTok Pay For 1 Million Video Creations?
This is where it gets pretty sad. The level of virality associated with 1 million people using your song might be enough to bring tears of joy, but with the sheer size of TikTok, the royalties directly from your song being used on the platform may bring you tears of sadness instead. For 1 million video creations with your song, expect to be paid to the tune of about $637. This doesn’t mean you should not release your songs to TikTok though, in my opinion. Although you won’t get paid much directly from TikTok fame, this will no doubt convert a good few people into followers, fans and (maybe) paying customers in the long run. Let me use a crudely drawn diagram to demonstrate.
As above, the bigger the base of the pyramid becomes, the greater the number of Spotify fans and potentially paying supporters there will be. The more awareness your music gets, the bigger this pyramid will become. So yes, although TikTok might not pay much directly, it’s still a really good avenue for gaining new listeners.
How Much Does TikTok Pay Video Creators?
The news goes from (in some ways) bad to worse for content creators on TikTok. The only real way to directly earn money from your views on TikTok is through their creator fund. If you meet their prerequisites, then you stand a chance to earn some money from your TikTok views.
According to growfollowing.com, you must meet the following requirements to be eligible to join the TikTok Creator fund:
Live in the US, France, Spain, UK or Italy.
Be at least 18 years old
Have 10,000 followers
have received over 100,000 views in the last 30 days.
Respect the community guidelines
growfollowing.com
If you are successfully joined into the TikTok creator fund, you can expect to earn about $0.02 to $0.04 per 1000 views on your video.
How Much Does TikTok Pay For 1 Million Views?
Based on the data we know about TikTok’s creator fund, if you get 1 million views and are a part of the fund, you can expect to make between $20 and $40 from this. This means that to replace a fast food job directly from TikTok (no sponsorships or anything else, just pure video views), you would need to get about 700 million views per year, or nearly 2 million views per day.
This means that based on Charli D’Amelio’s stats, even she would only earn about $800 per video.
So Unless you plan on looking at monetizing your audience on TikTok through other avenues, I would highly recommend you don’t bank on your TikTok views replacing your full time income for a while.
Conclusion. Does TikTok Pay Well?
After looking at the numbers for both musicians and video creators, I will have to say both yes and no. Yes, it’s possible to earn good money from gaining a large TikTok following, and no, TikTok themselves won’t be the ones paying out big. For musicians, I would argue it’s a little easier. If you are already easy to find on streaming services and your song is titled something obvious, people will come to you, especially if your song is catchy enough that they just want to hear it again and again. On the other hand, for video creators, its a little trickier. Either try to convert the TikTok audience over to a monetizable platform like YouTube, or seek ways of getting sponsored ad reads / selling merch.
If you’re wondering how much Instagram Reels pays, click here to check out my article on that too.
If you have any questions feel free to write a comment below and I’ll try to get back to you ASAP.
Cheers,
Tyler
