How to Grow on TikTok as a Music Artist

Optimizing Your TikTok Profile As a Music Artist

The first way to build your following and exposure on TikTok is to optimize your TikTok profile.

Yes, "optimizing your TikTok profile" sounds like meaningless Silicon Valley jargon. We promise it isn't. There are concrete steps you can take to make sure your page:

• Is a business account

• Is verified

• Is showing up in Google search results

These three things will help your profile and music compete with the platform’s best and brightest content creators. Plus, they place you on the path to growing as an artist on TikTok.

And the first one takes thirty seconds.

Getting Verified as a TikTok Musician?

Miley Cyrus is verified on TikTok. The influencers Lil Tay and Zack King are, too. Getting a verified account on TikTok is instant proof of credibility because users are not allowed to pay for one. That makes it different than Instagram, X, and so many more.

To be musically verified on TikTok, you must apply and pass TikTok's six verification guidelines. They are:

• Your account must be active and feature at least 1 publicly posted photo

• Your account must have a profile picture *and* artist bio

• Your account must be public, not private

• Your account must follow TikTok's Terms of Service

• You have to have two-factor authentication

• Your account must represent someone or something notable – i.e. it's gone viral, been featured in multiple news sources, etc

If you're reading this guide because you're still trying to go viral, don't despair. Taking the steps necessary to become verified on TikTok all but guarantees your growth as a TikTok artist. You'll be trying to farm consistent fan engagement, earning revenue, and using the correct hashtags for TikTok musicians.

Those are worthy pursuits on their own and -- taken in tandem -- ensure TikTok development.

Tik-Tok Business Tools for Musicians

The key to growing as an artist on TikTok? TikTok business tools for musicians. They:

• Analytics: you'll use this to track any given post's engagement, follower growth, and so much more. Analytics are a data-driven way to measure your success, and TikTok's written about them here.

• Commercial Music Library: The Commercial Music Library (or CML) is a collection of more than 1,000,000 sounds and songs pre-approved for commercial use. This makes creating royalty-free content a breeze, and you'll be doing a lot of that.

• Post Scheduler: this tool is exactly what it sounds like – a way to decide when your TikToks drop

No matter how much you do or don't use these tools, access to them is instrumental to growing as an artist on TikTok. But maybe you're still wondering if TikTok is worth your time as a musician. That's fair!

Let's look at three factors to break down why it is.

Your Music Going Viral on TikTok

Petey is one of 2023’s breakout music artists.

He’s signed to Capitol Records. He has more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram. That’s largely due to two things: his anthemic emo-pop rock songs and TikTok

Petey went viral during the COVID-19 lockdown for creating absurd, comedic TikTok’s with his manager Will Crane. Many of these didn’t focus on his music. They were more like sketches than anything else. This one is laugh-out-loud funny.

It’s also been watched more than a million times. And even though it’s closer to SNL than songwriting, it’s proof you should get your music on TikTok.

The goal of TikTok is to create appealing content. There are endless ways that you, a creative musician and artist, can do that. Do you have a bizarre special talent? Show it off. Do you impersonate celebrities? Film those impressions and set it to one of your songs.

Create great content with your music or on a TikTok business profile that links to your music and the streams and follows will come.

Just ask Petey.

Success Stories of Music Artists on TikTok

Lil Nas X began the YeeHaw challenge on TikTok. Beach Bunny’s “Prom Queen” became a hit on the app and led the band to get their record deal. PinkPantheress worked her way to one million TikTok followers by using her account as a testing ground for whether her music was “good enough to put out or not.”

There’s no one right way to write your TikTok success story, but it’s clear that having one is possible.

Best Hashtags for Musicians on TikTok

As of publication, here are the four best hashtags for musicians to use on TikTok:

• #music

• #singer

• #artist

• #newmusic

We know that these are thuddingly obvious choices. They also work. No effective TikTok post is complete without these hashtags for TikTok musicians.

It's the ones you add after this quartet that make things interesting:

• #fyp (#foryoupage)

• #viralvideos

• #tiktokchallenge

• #duet

• The hashtag of any challenge, duet, or trend you’re participating in

More importantly, these can all be used to inspire collaboration and for the types of content you can add to your TikTok profile.

How To Collaborate With Other TikTok Artists

Collaboration between TikTok artists isn’t just reserved for PinkPantheress and Ice Spice.

Participation in duos. Duets, and challenges are indirect collaborations with other TikTok artists who would otherwise be strangers. “Boy’s a Liar (Pt 2)”, may be a Billboard chart-topping hit, but its spirit is in keeping with the TikTok trends that made both its creators famous.

Everyday users and verified artists alike go viral for participating in challenges or duets. You’re likely to get attention on your profile from both when you do the same if you’ve used hashtags effectively.

That could lead to official collaborations, an increase in followers, or even merchandising opportunities.

On TikTok, creating is an act of promotion – don’t be scared to do so. There are millions of users out there who are ready to find, build on, and support you.

Encouraging User-Generated Content

Once your profile has more eyes on it, it's time to encourage users to generate content using your songs or albums. If you've been an active user and growing as an artist on TikTok, like we're discussing, the chances that this feels organic are infinitely higher.

Besides duets and challenges, here are some other video categories to try and tackle if user-generated content is your endgame:

1.Dances
Choreograph a routine to one of your songs

2.Pranks
Surprise unsuspecting people by playing your music loudly

3.Fitness / Sports
Set a fitness challenge of your choosing to one of your songs

Each of these ideas is easily repeatable for listeners around the world and is easily hashtag-able. That dramatically increases your chance of farming engagement from them quickly.

(Bonus tip? Come up with a unique hashtag for your content to use alongside the ones covered above.)

Monetizing Your TikTok Music

You want to monetize your music on TikTok. What’s more, you want to collect the maximum amount of royalties from it and protect your songs as intellectual property. The best way to accomplish all three is with a distribution service like TuneCore.

Obviously, we’re biased, and: when you upload your music to TikTok without the proper protections, the public can do whatever they want with it.

That leaves you – and your music – vulnerable to exploitation.

And while you can absolutely try and keep track of TikTok music monetization, that takes time. There’s so much to do as a musician making a living through your art. You need time to rehearse. You need time to write and book concert venues and be in-studio.

Outsourcing monetization, residual collection, and copyright protection to professionals puts money in your pockets and takes tasks off your plate.

It’s a win-win.