TikTok Music and CapCut now accept DistroKid songs

Millions of independent artists can now promote their music on TikTok Music, the recently launched subscription-based music streaming service, thanks to a new partnership with DistroKid. The deal lets musicians upload their songs to CapCut, ByteDance’s video editing app with 490 million iOS and Android users.

Independent artists who promote their music on popular platforms like TikTok Music and CapCut need a presence. TikTok Music is only available in five countries, but its billions of users who want to listen to and discover music could make it popular. DistroKid joins Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music on TikTok Music.

“TikTok is one of the most powerful music discovery platforms in the world,” DistroKid founder and CEO Philip Kaplan said. “Adding CapCut and the Commercial Music Library to this partnership makes it easy for millions of musicians to distribute their music worldwide, while TikTok’s new music streaming service expands its reach to more countries.”

In 2019, DistroKid, which distributes 30–40% of the world’s music, became one of the first distributors to help emerging artists upload their music to TikTok.

DistroKid’s support page says users get royalties for TikTok videos featuring their songs. Member payments come from DistroKid, not TikTok. Online estimates say TikTok pays artists 3 cents per video. DistroKid pays artists 100% of their earnings (excluding banking fees and taxes). The company did not disclose TikTok-distributed members’ total revenue.

DistroKid helps musicians sell songs on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, YouTube, Pandora, Amazon, and iHeartRadio.

TikTok’s Commercial Music Library (CML) offers DistroKid’s catalog for brand advertising. A DistroKid spokesperson told that the library is now “fully open” to all artists after beta testing.

“We expect large numbers of artists to take advantage of the CML from this point forward,” said the spokesperson.

Over two million artists use DistroKid for music distribution, monetization, promotion, metadata customization, and storage. After acquiring Bandzoogle, the company added e-commerce features to help users sell albums.

A week earlier, TikTok partnered with Tickets.com to sell tickets for its first live music event, “In The Mix.”