TikTok Artist Account For Musicians

You must have heard about Spotify For Artists, Apple Music For Artists, and even Amazon Music for Artists. But TikTok? Isn’t that a social media platform?

Yes, you’re right but TikTok is building something cool for musicians and we think you should know more about it. TikTok has recently announced ‘TikTok for Artists’ and this can be very important for any upcoming musician. By doing so, the company has combined a social media platform and a streaming app service for musicians releasing new music every day. In this article, we will try to answer these questions of yours:

1. What is a TikTok Artist Account?
   
   
2. Five TikTok Tools for Musicians
   
   
3. Our final thoughts?
   
    
   

What is a TikTok Artist Account?

We won’t be wrong if we say that the TikTok Artist Account is very similar to the Spotify For Artist tab. The main objective of introducing this on a social media platform is to:

• Verify the artist - attach a certain authenticity to his or her social media presence 
• User engagement - enhance the relationship between the musician and his or her fanbase. 
• Music marketing on TikTok - different tools could help artist highlight their new releases on TikTok. 

An artist account, as the name suggests, is the official account of any musician releasing tracks on TikTok. Note that you should have released at least 4 tracks and those tracks should be available on TikTok Music Library for you to sign up with an artist account. Not sure how to do this? Sign up to a music distributor that releases music on Tiktok

Pssst….come here: The account helps distinguish yourself among the sea of content creators with the tag labeled ‘Artist.’ The tag will serve as a visual cue to the community and prospective new followers that you are an artist and will appear beneath your user name. 

Five TikTok Tools for Musicians

The tools made available to musicians through the TikTok Artists Account are very similar to the features available in a Spotify For Artists account. The objective remains the same - to help artists promote their music better on TikTok and gain a social media presence at the same time. 

New Release

As the famous K-POP band BTS first used the new feature ‘New Release,’ the latter has become the talk of the town in less than a week! With the New Release feature, musicians can promote a new song for a maximum of 14 days before and 30 days following its release. Additionally, this technology makes new releases more visible on discovery, or explore pages. 

Does it ring a bell?

Yeah, that’s right. This is very similar to how Countdown pages work on Spotify. Both the features aim to create anticipation amongst listeners and viewers about the new release and thus, help gain a lot of traction once the track gets released.  

Music Tab

Another tab under the TikTok Artist Account is the Music Tab. Think of this as the equivalent of the Music Tab under the Artist Profile on Spotify. Reminiscent of streaming services like Spotify, the Music Tab arranges an artist’s discography and updates immediately with the latest releases. The track list features the releases of the artist or how many user-generated videos use the artist’s song amongst other things. You could release a song on TikTok through a music distributor and the music tab on your TikTok Artist Account will do the rest for you. So whoever stumbles upon your profile knows which songs are yours and you could get data on how popular your songs are by keeping track of how many videos utilize your song. This tracking feature is similar to how Spotify tracks the number of streams of your songs on the discography page. 

Furthermore, TikTok hosts something called a Creator’s Fund. As the name suggests, it is a cleverly placed incentive to drive more content on the platform - and make it financially friendly for different content creators. As an artist, you could also potentially earn through the Creator’s Fund. But note that, your videos should have more than 100,000 views in the last 30 days if you wish to earn some money. You should also have more than 10k followers on your account. 

You cannot apply for this through your artist account though. You can apply for a claim to the Creator’s Fund through a creator account only. This may be a tedious task, handling two different accounts on TikTok but, at the moment, TikTok hasn’t mentioned gaining access to the Creator’s Find through the artist account yet. 

Add to the Music app

Additionally, the TikTok Artist Account also has an ‘Add to Music app’ feature that allows users to instantly save TikTok songs to their Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music playlists by appearing to them as an ‘Add Song’ button. So if you have released a brand new track and it has gone viral on TikTok first, then viewers from TikTok can save your track to their Spotify - basically, you’d be shifting a lot of traction and fanbase from one platform to another - eventually increasing your Spotify streams as well. Pretty cool, eh?

Pssst…come here: We recommend you make content using your song first - probably start a trend or a dance challenge that would inadvertently get user-generated content (UGC) and would help you go viral not only on TikTok but on other streaming platforms as well. 

With so many content creators making numerous videos every day, sometimes, the credit for the original audio or song goes missing. Earlier, one could tap on the ‘Original Audio’ button on a particular TikTok video which would take you to the TikTok Music Library. You’d find an account that would have first posted a video using that particular audio or song. But with the advent of the TikTok Artist Account, claiming that song as yours is easier. However, note that you can ask to claim the original sound and carefully integrate it with your distribution if your music has been featured in over a thousand videos with source audio. Currently, TikTok is not going to accept original audio claims for fewer than a thousand videos.

By Artist

Circling back to what we have been asserting throughout the article, the objective of the ‘TikTok Artist account’ is to increase fan engagement as well. One way to do that is to go live on TikTok, interact, and comment on the UGC. TikTok Artist Account allows you, the musician, to express yourself for your fans to understand you better, through the ‘By Artist’ feature. Here, you get to pin your favorite post on the top of the Explore page for better visibility - very similar to how you can pin your posts in your feed on Instagram. 

Pssst…come here: We recommend you pin the post about your brand new album or track, especially when using the ‘New Release’ feature on your artist account. You could prioritize your music promotion efforts using the ‘By Artist’ feature. 

Behind the Song

With the ‘By Artist’ feature, you could also use the ‘Behind The Song’ feature on the TikTok Artist Account. This allows you to share the story behind your release, talk about what went on behind the recording, the behind-the-scenes music video, and so on. The idea is for you to get an opportunity to share your process with your fans and listeners. Take Charlie Puth, for instance. He showed the entire process of the making of the song ‘Light Switch,’ right from how he recorded and used the sample of a light swift turning on, and how he added his elements to the arrangement. His videos gained a lot of traction and fan engagement not only on TikTok but also on Instagram after he reposted those videos and clips. 

Our Final Thoughts

This was probably a much-needed addition that could be used rather cleverly in your music marketing efforts. You’d not only be promoting a social media marketing strategy but also repurposing your marketing for different streaming platforms right from one social media platform. TikTok has made the platform a lot friendlier for upcoming musicians like yourself, so we say, go for it and make full use of the features being introduced! 

Sign up and get your own TikTok Artist Account Now!

We at GreaseRelease, have a bunch of curators on our network who are looking for new & exciting music to push on their massive playlists. If you make music and want to reach a wider audience, check out our submission platform and get a chance to reach millions of listeners! Submit your tracks now!