This article is continued from the first article. If you haven't yet read that PHASE 1 blog post please read that first click here
2nd Phase:
WAYS TO MAKE MONEY FROM YOUR MUSIC?
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Of course, there’s many ways to monetise music. From what I’ve witnessed over the years most musicians don’t even do the basics (no, not friggin’ Gotye again!), like properly price their CDs, if at all.
Yes, you still NEED to sell CDs and other hardcopy versions of your music at gigs (and elsewhere).
Why?
People just don’t buy mp3 download cards at gigs (they often literally scratch their heads when you try to sell them even though download cards have been a thing for nearly a decade, plus they’re used to downloading mp3’s from Amazon, so it’s not like they don’t know about it) nor do they purchase your iTunes downloads when they’re at your gig.
Do you ever do that when you’re at an awesome gig?
If you let them leave the venue without having bought your music or merch (or at least taken something from your merch table, like a postcard or business card), then more than 90% of them will not buy your music later on and very few will (remember to) buy your music online. Opportunity missed!
‘Point of sale’ is an impulse in the moment action people make when they’re immersed and moved by the experience of the music and vibe of your show.
Why would you not have something for them to buy and take with them to become fans of yours?
Then there’s far too many musicians giving their Cds away for free!
Listen, you spent ages pouring your heart and soul into making that.
It costs money to produce that CD.
Please make sure you understand this next bit clearly.
People don’t place high value on free stuff and you don’t want to attract the kind of fans that want to get your music for free anyway.
Think about it.
When someone passes you a free CD you automatically think that it mustn’t be particularly good, at least compared to what you normally spend money on. You don't mean to, but you just do.
And we are long past the age of the demo CD.
Why record a demo when you can record an EP or album?
Conversely, when you spend your hard-earned cash to buy an album, you listen to that mofo at least more than once, to extract every last bit of value you can from it (unless it is genuinely terrible, but yours isn’t, is it? It’s awesome!).
Source: the Simpsons episode 9
Now there are plenty of keyboard warrior ‘experts’ that aren’t even musicians or at least not touring musicians that will say to you that physical Cds, vinyl or cassettes are on the decline, but that’s simply not true of sales at live gigs and the independent music scene.
It’s only true of the exclusive 1% society of massive major label artists.
Ignore everything you hear from the major label mainstream music industry.
They’re out of touch dinosaurs on a sinking zeppelin (the hotair blimp, not the band).
Not only that, most of the (savvy) business executives working in those major labels have their personal stock market investments in streaming, so they couldn’t give a stuff if it hurts the artist’s interests by promulgating spurious notions of selling hardcopy CDs as being antiquated.
For the rest of us, physical merch sales are just as good as they've ever been and a vital part of a healthy profitable independent music business strategy.
(And hey, vinyl is so HOT at the moment and expanding rapidly so if you can afford to get your singles, EPs, or albums pressed on 7”, 10” or 12” vinyl without selling your children in the process, do so)
Now, many musicians fall for those expensive seminars and membership sites that promise a 'get rich quick' scheme without having to leave your bedroom.
Look, I get it and have fallen prey to this crap myself.
But get your head out of the ‘get rich quick’ mentality.
If you want to just get rich, go learn the stock markets or the land property markets. (Boring right?)
There are no magic bullet shortcuts that will suddenly make you rich and famous, especially with things like licensing, for example.
Not without you having to do a heck of a lot of serious work… And then there are still no guarantees.
So you may as well work towards something that has guaranteed results.
And seriously, there is more than half-decent music now being composed and produced by AI (artificial intelligence) programs.
Source: Terminator
What does that mean for the future of music?
Well, it definitely means that if you are a quality live act that performs regularly, you’ll not get easily replaced by an AI interface, but if all your eggs are in the basket of making money from online music, you might end up replaced by an automated process, like the gas-lantern lighters of days of old were replaced by automated electric street lights.
Okay, so this is the order of priority for accessibility of what monetises your music the fastest.
(1) Gigs –
Whether guaranteed paid gigs or door deal gigs, this is where the majority of your income stream will come from, even for massive artists (and DJ/producers), as long as you promote and market the gigs at your highest capacity, of course.
Don’t let anyone steer you away from this cash cow. It is the fastest and most accessible way to earn money as a musician, whether through professional busking
(Don’t snob off busking because there are a plethora of musicians that tour the world earning $20,000 - $60,000 per quarter just playing the busking circuit during peak seasons. One duo I know sold $24,000 worth of CDs over 5 days at a busking festival in Canada! Plus 2 of Australia’s highest selling new artists both grew their fan base & performance skillset from busking the streets of Melbourne and within a short period of time were topping the Aussie charts with their respective EPs without any radio or TV airplay)
or the tried and tested venue/festival circuit or the growing house concert circuit.
Not only that, touring your music and playing regularly is your BEST promotional tool and avenue to grow your legion of superfans.
(2) Physical merchandise –
As mentioned before, you MUST sell physical versions of your music, like CDs, vinyl, cassettes, USB drives, download cards, etc.
But you really must get into also selling augmented products like the obvious T-shirts, caps, hoodies, bumper stickers (yes, sell those too), download stickers, beer coolers, coffee mugs, and any other unique side products that relate to your music or relate your ethics and world view that fans will identify with.
FANS WILL BUY THESE FROM YOU.
Moreover, you can upsell packaged bundle deals for fans. I sell far more ‘3 x CD + plus sticker’ bundles as well as ‘T-shirt + CD’ packs than stand alone products.
Some gigs I’ll earn more (or at least the same amount) from the merchandise sales than the gig pay itself.
But most musicians hate the idea of selling and downlplay the merch stand. (I've done this myself)
Many bands and artists don’t even put their mailing list and merchandise on a stand/table in an easy to see area (near the stage) at all. (I've also done this myself)
Some forget to mention it onstage! (yup. Been there. Done that too!)
Other musos mention it in a too desperate way, as if the potential buyer is doing you a massive favour if they buy that CD that you busted your bits off to produce and replicate.
Avoid these mistakes, especially of forgetting to mention it (regularly, without being salesy).
All of these things done well makes your professionalism stand out from all the other acts out there.
(3) Performing Rights Organisations –
Yup! Every time you play one of your own tunes at a venue and you report it to your particular performing rights organisation, they pay you per play.
At the end of the financial year each savvy live performing musician that is playing heaps of gigs (because they took the Music Touring Bootcamp advice from Nathan) gets an awesome royalty deposit in the thousands!
This is usually when performing songwriters can afford to go and buy fun new instruments or get a new EP recorded or fix their broken touring van!
If you’re not a member or you forget to submit your live performance returns, WTF are you thinking?
This is such an untapped cash-cow for artists so get on it!
Source
(4) Licensing your music for TV, film, video games, etc.
I'll be honest, this area isn’t really my personal area of expertise (I’ll explain why in a sec), but I have friends who have earned some decent coin and garnered a bit of exposure from this.
One friend from a small town, got a few of his songs aired on 7 different Hollywood-made TV shows.
He saw some nice-ish royalty cheques come in and gained some more fans, initially. But he started choosing to play less shows in order to record more tunes for potential licensing because he hoped that the licensing thing would replace much of his gigging. Unfortunately, the initial extra boost in income and fans from those TV shows weren’t enough to replace his gigging circuit altogether.
There are, however, examples of people that do well out of license sync.
This is a good potential income source if you’re savvy enough to get an inroads to that world.
All the best resources say that it takes a bucket-load of work and there are still no guarantees your music will get selected.
Look, I’d very much love to have my music in heaps of films and TV shows, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not so keen on playing lottery with my income stream when it comes to supporting my family from my art. Are you?
(5) Digital Downloads –
There are many aggregators that can deliver your music to a plethora of digital download sites, like the famous ones, such as iTunes or you can DIY it from your own shopping cart or via digital distributors such as bandcamp.com.
They all have their particular specialties, services and uses, and so charge different fees or percentages, but even after the Paypal or Stripe cut is taken the artist still gets a majority chunk of the sale.
This method will only give you a relative trickle of income, unless you happen to have a Youtube video go viral, as it did for a good mate of mine. He just busks at a few markets and plays a few small festivals here and there, but his rather unique one-man-band performance got shot on an iPhone and it somehow went viral.
He doesn’t even know how, yet despite going viral, he still busks at the markets selling his CDs and earns more money than most touring musicians I know from that alone.
If your video goes viral, then digital downloads could become a good income stream.
Getting a video to go viral?
That’s also playing lottery with your music income stream if you rely on this as your sole method for music success.
Having said all that, no artist should ignore that video content is a massive part of any successful artistic business model.
(6) Streaming (it's definitely NOT what you think) –
Do you have your music up on digital streaming sites, like Spotify?
Do you know why?
Are you hoping to get discovered from the sea of millions of songs available out there?
Do you think you’ll be discovered on Apple Music?
Do you think you’ll miraculously go viral and win a legion of fans on Tidal?
Do you think you’ll actually make any decent revenue from streaming?
When it comes to streaming, the numbers don’t lie.
(install) Reality check!
Spotify admits that the average payout to rights holders lies somewhere between $0.00014123 (ad supported tier) to $0.00066481 (premium tier) per play. That means you’d need between roughly 6,344,000 to 22,460,000 plays per month to cover your bills and cost of living.
And not only that, but payments per play to artists from all the major streaming services have declined 16% since 2014, despite the fact that these streaming companies’ profits have all grown massively.
Over and over again I’ve heard many music industry people tout that streaming is the future, but clearly not for independent artists (so it’s more of a case that these music industry experts actually hold shares in these streaming companies).
Heck, not even many major label artists benefit financially from streaming (Pharrel’s song, Happy, initially streamed over 40 million times, but he only got paid less than $4,000).
What streaming does for independent artists?
It gives fans free accessibility to your music to anyone, when they would otherwise buy that music.
And unless you’re spending heaps on payola plays you’re not getting new fans either.
These streaming sites aren’t like the radio stations playing your music. When a radio station plays your song, the station and the dj/radio presenter is essentially endorsing your song.
It’s like a recommendation that the public trust, but that’s not remotely the case with streaming sites.
On these streaming sites, people search for the music they specifically want to hear or playlists that are akin to their tastes, which I’ll remind you, your established fans will do, but the people who’ve never heard of you before won't be looking for you.
To put it plain and simple and really drill it in –
You’re never going to get discovered on Spotify or Apple music, etc.
It is not exposure.
It’s more like you’ve just lost a game of pool without sinking a single ball, and you are forced to run around the table 10 times with your pants around your ankles. Lol!
7) Steemit! Last, but not because of lower importance!
Steemit is revolutionising music, the arts and social media!
It is the template of what will replace streaming sites like Spotify (scamify).
You're reading this on Steemit, so I don't need to proselytize to you the wonders of this platform and what it can offer to independent musicians. (if you've stumbled upon this article outside of Steemit and you're not signed up yet, get on it pronto!)
If you haven't foundyet then look it up, you'll be inspired!
Now, it’s important to know exactly where you’re at right now with your income from music.
What do you earn from music per week (or per fortnight or per month)? $_______________
Music earnings - So how much of what you earn from music can cover what you need to survive and thrive?
SLS Amount $____________
(minus) -
Music Earnings Amount $____________
= $____________
Phase 3 coming soon! Stay tuned!
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