English singer-songwriter Tom Rosenthal has detailed how his single ‘Home’, (aka the song you’ve heard all over TikTok that’s been used over 1.6M times and became a hyper-viral sensation) has helped him to make a bloody fortune and a half.
In a brand new TikTok vid from the artist, he explains that when the song first took off on the app, he was approached by multiple record labels across the world who wanted a piece of the pie, but he stuck to his guns and did it alone.
Naturally, the TikTok sound grew bigger and bigger, which lead to revenue from YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and of course, TikTok itself. And, the money was all his, which is yuge.
Now, he didn’t name his earnings, but we’ve estimated it to be north of $700k.
@tomrosenthalmusic Reply to @cbariatd let’s talk MONEY!
“When this song kinda exploded in a big way, pretty much every record label in the world got in touch and said ‘can we have that one, can we have a bit of that?’, and I said ‘no you can’t’,” Rosenthal says in his video.
“They said, ‘oh well it’ll be a flash in the pan then… might get a few streams in the first few days and then fall apart’. Well, they were wrong. I didn’t go with them. I was right.
“That means I get to keep all the money, it’s really quite a lot of money I’m not gonna lie, no point in lying, it’s a short life. You can look at how much 100 million streams gets you… the difference is I didn’t give anything away to a big record label.”
And yes I did the research, and my scientific conclusion (via a nifty streaming royalties calculator) is that Rosenthal made some mad stonks from ‘Home’ going ballistic on TikTok.
Judging by the number of streams he currently has, he would’ve made an estimated £348,849 from Spotify and an additional £40,108 from YouTube, which equates to about AUD$656,286 from Spotify and $75,454 from YouTube.
Keep in mind this isn’t counting all the other streaming services and sources of revenue, plus the fact that this is all on the back of a single song.
No idea what song I’m talking about? If you’ve spent any time on TikTok then you probably do, but just don’t know the name of it. It’s this tune:
@cesarmartinez.02 11/22/14❤️ @jazminj.12 greenscreen fyp relationship foryou
A bit of fun trivia for you, Rosenthal officially released the song under the pseudonym of Edith Whiskers, as he feared that its viral nature online would forever be associated with his real name.
You can read all about his imaginary grandma of an alias here.
Time for me to work on my next big TikTok hit.
