How to Prepare a Club Ready Songs Track for TikTok

A Club Ready Songs track goes on TikTok as a short vertical clip: cut 15 to 30 seconds starting at the first drop from the WAV, lay it under the cover JPEG in a 1080×1920 MP4 with AAC audio, and upload from the app. Club Ready Songs does not make video, but it tells you exactly where the hook is: the share page's free 30-second preview starts at the drop, cue points.txt lists the first drop to the millisecond, and a DJ edit's Drop in button jumps to two seconds before the song comes in. TikTok normalises to about −14 LUFS, so a DJ edit for this purpose is built with Volume level at −14.

Steps

1. Find the hook

Open the track's share page at /t/ and play the preview. It starts at the drop and runs 30 seconds, which is the section TikTok viewers should hear first. For the exact time, open cue points.txt from the DJ pack and read the first drop line, for example "1:00.952 first drop". On a DJ edit, press Drop in on the result panel; it jumps to two seconds before the intro end, and the comment tag gives the intro end to the millisecond.

2. Download the WAV and the cover

Press WAV on the result panel or unzip the DJ pack. Use the WAV rather than the MP3 so the AAC encode in your editor is the only lossy step. Take "Artist - Title - cover.jpg" from the DJ pack for the picture. For a DJ edit there is no cover; use a photo or a still of yourself.

3. Set the loudness

TikTok plays back around −14 LUFS. For a DJ edit, press Change settings & rebuild, set Volume level to −14 and rebuild before you cut the clip. A studio track at −8 is turned down by TikTok and still sounds fine; a drop is fixed at −8 and gets the same treatment. Never boost the clip in the editor; the file already peaks at −1 dBTP.

4. Cut the clip on a bar line

In a free audio or video editor, place the cut one beat before the first drop so the downbeat lands just after the clip begins. One beat is 60 divided by BPM seconds, 0.476 s at 126 BPM. Make the clip a whole number of bars: a bar is 240 divided by BPM seconds, so at 126 BPM eight bars is 15.24 s and sixteen bars is 30.48 s. Add a short fade at the end, half a beat is enough, unless you want the clip to loop.

5. Build the vertical video

Set the project to 1080×1920, 9:16, 30 frames per second. Put the cover in the middle third of the frame, scaled to the width, and fill the rest with a blurred copy or a plain colour. Keep text out of the bottom fifth, where TikTok's caption and buttons sit. Export MP4 with AAC audio at 48 kHz; most editors default to 256 or 320 kbps, either is fine.

6. Optionally open with a drop

A 3 s DJ drop with your name before the beat lands tells viewers whose track it is. Render it on the Drops page with Render 3 variations and place the Dry version over the first bar, or the MP3 with the Impact hit bed before the music starts. The drop is −8 LUFS and a −14 edit is six dB quieter, so pull the drop down about 6 dB in the editor so the voice does not jump out.

7. Upload and link back

Upload the MP4 in the TikTok app, write the title and artist in the caption with the BPM if your audience is DJs, and put the Club Ready Songs share link in your profile. The share page has the cover, the 30-second preview and an open Download MP3 button, which is where listeners get the full track. There is no direct publishing from the site, so this is a manual upload.

Tips

• Export three clips from different cues, the first drop, the vocal in and the outro start, and post them on different days. Same files, three angles.
• Cut on bars, not seconds. A 15.24 s clip at 126 BPM ends on a downbeat; a 15.00 s clip ends mid-bar.
• Keep the first second loud. Start one beat before the drop so there is a kick within half a second of the clip starting.
• Save the editor project. When the next render is ready, swap the audio and the cover and export again.
• A 60 s clip is common and longer is allowed, but the 15 to 30 s cut from the drop is the one that gets replayed.

Common problems

• The clip is quiet next to other TikToks. It was built below −14 LUFS or you lowered it in the editor. Rebuild the DJ edit at −14 and export without gain changes.
• The hook arrives too late. You started the clip at the cue instead of one beat before it, or picked the intro end instead of the first drop. Use the first drop line in cue points.txt.
• The cover is tiny or stretched. You dropped a square image into a 9:16 project without scaling. Scale to width and fill the rest with a blur.
• The drop drowns the music. The drop is −8 LUFS over a −14 track. Lower the drop by about 6 dB.