The Kid Laroi, Masked Wolf make TikTok Top 50 earnings table

TikTok is considerably more than a dance-challenge app, and a black hole for your precious time.

There’s real money to be made from the short-form video platform, the stuff that folds.

At least eleven songs generated more than $10,000 from the social app in the last three months alone, a new study into TikTok “sounds” has found.

TikTok

Popp Hunna’s ‘Adderall (Corvette)’ leads the Top 50 earnings table, according to the study by Uswitch, the U.K-based price comparison service.

Since its release last October, the song soundtracked more than 27.1 million videos on the app.

In the last 90 days alone, Popp Hunna has made more than £25,000, or $45,000, while the late Pop Smoke’s ‘What You Know Bout Love’ generated £17,500 or $31,000.

Uswitch’s analysts took TikTok “sounds” and studied the changes in trends in chart position, streams, social media following, and, as a result, Spotify earnings revenue for artists going viral through the platform.

Sydney hip-hop artists The Kid Laroi (‘Without You’ at No. 33 earning $1,382) and Masked Wolf (‘Astronaut In The Ocean’ at No. 37 earning almost $1,000) make the list of most-viral songs from the past three months.

Masked Wolf by Harpreet Singh

Old-school tunes have also had enjoyed some extra cash. Run-DMC’s ‘It’s Tricky’ got an extra life on TikTok, with 5 million videos using the “sound,” translating to almost $10,000 in 90 days.

Those numbers won’t buy you a property in Double Bay, but they’re revenues that didn’t exist a year ago.

“TikTok is changing the way Gen-Z listens to music,” comments Rehan Ali, mobiles expert at Uswitch.com. “It’s also given new and established artists alike another platform to promote their songs.”

TikTok is one of the downloaded apps on the planet with about 700 million monthly users.

It’s the “hot new social network,” particularly with young Australians, according to market research firm Roy Morgan, which reports more than 1.6 million Australians visit the website or use the app in an average month.

The China-developed platform launched as a rogue operator, but has since gone legit with a string of content licensing deals.

In Australia, TikTok has been in expansion-mode for the past year, with the appointment of Ollie Wards as Director of Music and a number of key positions filled at the Australia and New Zealand business.

Last weekend, TikTok pushed out a Mardi Gras float for the first time, with G-Flip playing a starring role. The software brand also sponsors the NBL.

“Artists always have to adapt whenever a new social media channel takes off, and TikTok is undoubtedly the latest to make a big impact in the music industry,” Rehan Ali continues.

“It’s hard to predict the next trend, but TikTok‘s eclectic mix of old and new music shows that anything has the potential to be a viral hit on the app’s sound feature.”

See the table of Top 50 artists with the highest earnings through TikTok in the last 90 days:

TikTok earnings table

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.