HOW CAN MUSICIANS QUIT THEIR DAY JOBS? (PHASE 2) - The most practical advice for your music career you'll hear this year!
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?
.
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 found @openmic yet 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!
Please make sure you vote for @pfunk, @ausbitbank as witnesses here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses. These dudes do lotsa good.
Thanks so much for commenting below
(because I'm hoping you're about to ).
If you felt the vibe of this article, or it's helped you shift perspective,
please do click upvote, click resteem, click follow and comment.
Let's connect, be friends!
I'd really love to hear from you.
I try my best to check out the blogs of my genuine upvoters as well as those of you who do genuine comments and especially those who follow me…
Also, I'm a proud helpinaut!
Visit @helpie to find out what that means and
to find out if you'd be a proper fit for our discord group!
Helping is the #1 goal!
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmeh5QGakcydJBCsPHSLbjDegMRVM9J8UreNCxbhgS8cC4/Helpienaut_post_banner_02-01.png)
![Nathan-Kaye-Steemit-Banner-01.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmeNeXnevL9tKDfKXHwfEDaqPLZy378bAemUQjm7nmoYXE/Nathan-Kaye-Steemit-Banner-01.jpg)
Nice in depth and very useful article... I really need to do more merchandise even if it only usually sells during gigs and venues, it's true they can make a difference. In my case I do small illustrations and signed autographs and miniprints. I try my cds to have added value they all have a book of drawings and digital download free. It's true I need to rescue my old newsletter, still it's been quiet on gigs and most of this advice don't work well on online stores.
About rights collecting organisations I have my love-hate relations with them, though it's true they collect revenue, in my country they are so eager to do so that they do without properly scouting, so most of the time it "limit your own promotion" as you can´t grant permission easily to blogs and radios to promote your songs, they have the right "to interfere on your behalf" Even if you do a venue of your own songs, they come knocking to ask for a percentage, than then in part goes back to you... most of the time you'll end paying for your own rights to be collected and repaid back to you (minus their percentage) unless you get tv placement. Of course I register but use intellectual property, and have some of my repertoire out of their grasp.
Very useful posts.
I was a freelance musician for over a decade... sadly not now, but slowly trying to get back to it. Music industry have changed and we are trying to adapt... thus we are here, right?
Thanks for your input. The physical merchandise you offer (small illustrations and signed autographs and miniprints etc) are excellent augmented products that fans love to buy.
I think musicians need to think more along these lines that you are implementing because augmented products really sell. It has always surprised me, but then makes a lot of sense at the same time, so it can't be ignored.
My experience with rights collecting organisations has been awesome! I get great royalty payments from Australia's main performing rights association every year, which ends up making a massive difference just at a time I really need the boost. They don't have any right to interfer with granting permission for song use. It's only publishers that do that so from what you're saying I think you are meaning publishing and licensing companies, which are vastly different from (copy)rights collecting organisations like APRA (Australian Performing Rights Association, or ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). I have had friends get majorly screwed by publishing companies with regards to getting permission to use their own songs in opportunites that come by them. That sucks.
With getting back into being a freelance professional musician living from your music, I think that you have such great talent and a very marketable niche that you will do fabulously with your transition back.
Thanks so much for this in depth comment..
:)
What a lovely in-depth, comprehensive article. So much value in here and amazing coming from a seasoned musician veteran as yourself.
Appreciate you submitting this in the SML/SMA's Educator Showdown contest. What an example of great quality music education related content.
Much love and respect bud.
Thanks so much @chiefmappster!
I just hope that lots of good musicians get the info and put it to use so that we have a strong collective of independent musicians earning a living from music here on Steemit supporting each other!
Blessings buds
Amennnn that is the goal. Would help so many do what they love and also raise the world's vibrations at the same time. Seems like a win-win to me.
Glad to see you are doing your part to help others achieve this.
Nathan, PREACH!!! This is what everyone out there needs to hear. Especially the bit about streaming and the realities of the modern music industry. It's so easy to just go along with all the fads and forget that these huge mainstream artists are tied into the big corporations which are in bed with the streaming services. Not the same for us little people. I would also add to the bit about licensing that if you are a good songwriter producer you can also try your hand at getting some placements. I make a descent amount of money quarterly just from my royalty check alone but I've been grinding for more than 10 years and have gotten a handful of placements (very small) and always try to pitch stuff through the channels I've been able to build through the years. Thanks for this! Keep schoolin' em!
Thanks so much sista Katya and bruthaman Chris (not sure which one of you wrote this)!
You're one of the ones that really 'gets it' so I'm glad we've connected.
By the way, congrats on your Top 5 in Open Mic! That's more radness! Yeeeeew!
PS. let's chat more about placements/licensing
This post is awesome, as a fellow musician (who atm gigs only at weekends) striving to be a professional one day I couldn't agree more on some of these points.
And yeah man, Steemit is the future, I see lots of potential here.
Great article,
Cheers!
Thank you @that.bass.guy!
Well, if you're playing gigs on the weekends and you're charging what you're worth, you should already be earning at least a part-time wage and therefore leagues ahead of many musicians out there and closer to your goal than you probably realise.
(if you're not charging what you're worth, you must take steps to correct that. Venues and people will only value you as much as you value yourself)
Stay in touch - are you on Discord, mate?
Np mate ^^
Well, basically we are getting almost our worth, not really, but we're working towards it. Economy in Croatia is really sucky, so there are places where we go below our price.
Will do, yes I am, it's @that.bass.guy
Dtube and steemit is now one of the perfect place for us to share our work first. These are mandatory for the person, who want build their career as a musician. I am not one though. But i like music. So,having new songs to listen, gives me pleasure.
Well, we music creators need music lovers, like yourself, otherwise we'd have nobody to share our music with...
So blessings to you
Here we are, give us your work. Blessing to you too.
That's all well and good, but doing all that work, where on earth did you find time to get so good with the music bro? 🤣
You speak a whole lot of sense here, almost like a manual for anyone looking to promote themselves and monetize their music. Good shout!
Unfortunately, I can't find the energy to put into the sales and merch side of things for my solo work or with my band. I think a lot of creatives are pretty poor at the organised, selling themselves, side of things.
I think perhaps you're quite lucky to be able to make you brain work well for you on both levels, I dunno. The whole sales side turns my creative side right off somehow.
It was the same with my photography though. After finishing studying photography I got a job as a press photographer for a local rag. I couldn't stick it more than a year, and following that job I didn't pick a camera up for nearly 3 yrs.
Of course I'm not destined to make so much money from my creative output because of this, but I accepted that a long time ago. 😉
Do people still buy CD's though Nathan, I mean for decent money? And do you sell cd's with a download card so they can download it too?
I'm a huge fan of vinyl though and totally agree, it's great to see more people introducing it to their merch stalls. It's the only thing that really takes my money at gigs, and let's face it, it's still the coolest thing in the world to have your own music on vinyl. 😎
Cheers bro