Ways to Make Money As A Musician: Musicians now have greater professional control than ever before. With a variety of accessible tools and platforms, you may easily record, distribute, sell, stream, and promote your music. But how to generate money as a musician still remains one of the largest obstacles.
So, how do you monetize your musical output? To develop a long-lasting career, it’s critical to diversify your income sources, whether they come from performing, selling merchandise, or online music sales. The methods for earning money through music are listed below.
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Top 8 Best Ways To Make Money As A Musician In 2023
1. Earn money with music streaming: Nowadays, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are where most listeners acquire their music. Thus, 80% of the money made by the music industry now comes from streaming. In light of this, it should go without saying that any musician who is serious about pursuing a career should release their music on streaming services.
But heed this warning: unless you’re one of the fortunate few to make a top-charting hit, you won’t get wealthy just from streaming royalties. To make a respectable living, you would need to attract hundreds of thousands of listeners each month on Apple Music, which only pays musicians one penny in royalties per stream. Nevertheless, 13,000 artist catalogues on Spotify still bring in at least $50,000, proving that it is indeed feasible. Although many individuals sell their music on Spotify, it’s also the most widely used.
Additionally, making your music available on streaming services would at the very least enable more people to find it. Additionally, the more people who hear your music, the more money you may generate from offering your fans music downloads and other merchandise.
2. Live performances and cover gigs: The main source of income for musicians is gigging. When they first start out, many artists largely rely on this reliable source of income. Live performances may be seen in a variety of settings, such as bars, eateries, festivals, weddings, corporate events, etc.
And the best part about playing at these live events is that, in addition to generally being paid by the venue, you also get to connect with a brand-new audience, which may help you expand your fan base. Additionally, selling CDs and other merchandise at the live event will boost your revenue. You don’t want to perform in front of a live audience just yet. Why not try broadcasting a live performance from your living room to your audience?
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3. Give lessons in music or an instrument: In all seriousness, teaching is a fantastic method for musicians to make money. One-on-one instrument lessons can help you supplement your income while also giving you the chance to improve your skills.
Or, if you want to take it more seriously, you can work full-time in public or private schools as a licenced music instructor. The nice thing about choosing this road is that it’s a feasible career option that provides you a reliable employment you can have till retirement—while still allowing you to spend every day immersed in music.
4. Sell your expertise: Additionally, you are not required to provide lessons in order to impart your musical expertise. Other strategies to market your expertise include developing online music classes that include anything from teaching music theory to writing music. Your online courses will be easier to launch if you use a course platform like Podia or Thinkific.
Selling courses has the cool benefit of being a passive source of revenue. A course simply has to be created once, and you can sell it endlessly with little to no effort. Create a video course, register for a course platform, and upload it to get started. You can utilise the free plans offered by Podia and Thinkific to get started. Additionally, you might want to think about putting your course on websites like Udemy or Skillshare.
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5. Sell products: For musicians, selling merchandise may be a fantastic supplementary source of income. You may offer it for sale together with your music on your website or through merchandise booths at live events.
And don’t worry, you won’t have to shell out a lot of cash to acquire stock to begin. Simply utilise print-on-demand websites in their place. A excellent alternative for this is Sellfy, an ecommerce platform with integrated print-on-demand fulfilment that you can use to create your own website.
To make your personalised stuff (think t-shirts, stickers, mugs, etc.), sign up with Sellfy and upload your ideas digitally to product mockups. You may then sell that merchandise online without needing to buy any stock up front. When you make a sale, Sellfy’s fulfilment centres receive the order and produce it, print it, and send it directly to the buyer on your behalf. The difference is what you keep as profit after they charge you for the base goods and fulfilment costs.
6. Sell your songs as downloads on the internet: Selling your songs, albums, and EPs as digital downloads to your fans is one of the easiest methods to monetize your own music. Even though many customers these days prefer to listen to music online, there is still a sizable market of die-hard fans who are ready to pay to download individual songs and whole albums.
By building your own online store with an ecommerce store builder and then uploading your music as digital items, you can take advantage of that market. You’ll be prepared to leave in five minutes.
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7. Start a YouTube channel: For musicians, YouTube is an excellent medium for discovery. Creating your own YouTube channel is essential if you want to become well-known. But in addition to the advantages of marketing, YouTube also offers the possibility of earning money right away.
Adsense is the easiest way to monetize your YouTube channel. Your ability to monetize your music videos and generate income based on the number of viewers who see the advertising increases as you achieve a particular threshold for subscriptions and views. Using your YouTube channel to advertise your online shop or affiliate offers like Amazon affiliate links for the instruments you play are two other ways to make money from your channel.
8. License your music: Licencing is another option to profit from your music. If you licence your music, you may be confident that when it is used in advertisements, TV shows, movies, or other media, you will be compensated as the owner of the copyright.
The amount you will make from a licence often relies on the size of the project that uses your music. Licencing rates might vary greatly. For instance, the music licencing business Musicbed costs $49 for songs to be used in wedding videos but $499 for songs to be used in films with a $250k–$500k budget.
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Conclusion
There are several methods for musicians to generate money, including selling merchandise and tickets on their own websites and receiving royalties through licences. Try out a few of these strategies to mix up your sources of income and have a steady cash flow.
Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka, ACMC, is a lawyer and a certified mediator/conciliator in Nigeria. He is also a developer with knowledge in various programming languages. Samuel is determined to leverage his skills in technology, SEO, and legal practice to revolutionize the legal profession worldwide by creating web and mobile applications that simplify legal research. Sam is also passionate about educating and providing valuable information to people.