42 Ways to Make Money as a Musician
What if I told you there are 42 different ways for you to make money as a musician, would you believe me?
Artist of the Day: Colonel Bruce Hampton
So let's figure out how to make money as a musician. 42 different ways. Let's talk about it.
I was fumbling around on Facebook the other day, and I ran across this article, and it really kinda set me back for a minute and made me realize all the different ways that I'm currently not seeking to make money as a musician, and it made me immediately realize that I needed to share this and get a little bit more in depth with it and let people know about the opportunities that exist that maybe aren't top of mind. Side note, sorry for whoever I saw this from on Facebook that I can't give credit for sharing it with me, I don't remember, and that was like weeks ago and... I'm sorry, I can't remember.
So the article breaks down 42 different ways for a musician to make money into a few different categories, they are songwriter and composer, revenue, performer and recording artist, revenue performer, session musician, revenue, knowledge of craft, teaching and producing brand related revenue. And number six, fan corporate and foundation revenue. So if I were to go through each and every single one of these 42, it would take a long time, and I would rather just pick a few and explore these topics may be the ones that aren't so common. But - if you want the full list, here it is!
Let's start with the songwriter and composer revenue category.
So if you're a song writer and you write songs for a living and you perform, and maybe you're a singer also, and you're constantly trying to figure out how to get your songs to either be bought by someone else, or you're trying to figure out how to just get them hurt in general, this is a category for you, but in this category, there were a couple of things that stood out, I thought was really cool. How about ringtone revenue? Have you ever thought of that you can put your music into ringtones and then upload them to the sites, and when people use them, you make money. It seems like everybody has Logic these days, so making a ring tone should be pretty easy. It's also a really cool way to kinda get your music out there if you are a composer. The next one I thought was really cool in this category was Lyric display, which is basically talks about uploading your lyrics to sites that host lyrics. You may not know this, but online Lyric site to pay publishers the rights to have those lyrics printed on their website, and in turn, those publishers would then pay you. How about sheet music sales? When's the last time you thought about putting your music to sheet music, if you're not capable of doing that, maybe even just simple core charts would help, but if you can't do that either, it might be worth taking your song to somebody that does transcription services. You might pay a onetime fee, but after you do that, that's literally online forever, and if you're a career musician and you know you're gonna be doing this for a very long time, that's a really sound investment. Say it takes a couple of times for you to sell that in order to recoup the payment for you having somebody transcribe it and put it in sheet music, but the rest of the years of you playing music is all profit. That one I thought was really cool. Also, I think there's something to be said for commissions, which is another category that's in this particular subcategory; the commission is really cool because you're able to get up front money to basically write or compose a song, whether it's instrumental or with lyrics that matches up with a particular person's agenda or need, making yourself available for commissions, maybe through simple ad copy on your website or even a targeted ad like on Facebook or something, could yield a really big result, and by result, I mean money.
Moving on performance and artist revenue.
There's not much new news in this particular section, I would say most of the things that I see are very typical, such as retail sales, digital sales, royalties for performance, etcetera. But one thing that always slips my brain is the neighboring rights royalties - that just means if somebody that's on foreign soil from where you are decides to record your song, if that's a way that you get your money for them recording the song. Also in this section, they talk about things related to the film industry, like the film musicians secondary market fund, or the sound recording special payments, fun. These things are really cool to know that they exist, and that if you're somebody that's writing and recording music and you're an artist or a part of a band or something, you need to know about these... Let's go ahead and move on to the next one. How about performer session musician revenue? These are all very cut and dry talking about studio work, live work, etcetera - the one thing to notice in this section is a nonfeatured artists payments, so if you're part of AFM or SAG, you qualify for this particular benefit of getting royalties, just generally speaking, for playing on the track. I think that's something that most people don't realize, and I could be missing out on some money also, this speaks to how active your AFM or SAG chapter is as far as their organization and such, which... We will not get into that. Let's go to the next section.
This next section is called knowledge of craft.
So teaching or producing, and obviously the first two are teacher and producer, and I think we all know what that means, there's always academia and those are always really cool to get, but those are highly competitive Master Class lecture type scenarios. And you might wanna think about starting from the ground up with master classes and things of that nature, through your own social media live streaming format, you could easily set up a Zoom call or any of those types of things. If you don't have a lot of gear and you can charge a very honest fee for the production value provided and you can teach and tell people about what you do, you might be surprised how many people wanna support you in your endeavor, and if you spend time advertising it like you would do a show or a concert, you might be surprised again, who might show up?
Brand related material.
So yes, we're talking about tshirts, we're talking about even YouTube stuff that you put out and maybe people find you here, and that somehow becomes money that can come from ads if you reach a certain platform, which yet I have not... But that's not really the main reason why I'm here anyway. Let's face it, if I really wanted a lot of money, maybe I'd go be a lawyer or something. But there is plenty and plenty of money to be made as a musician and ad revenue just one way. Also, I have merchandise links in my comments section, for example. So anything that you put out on YouTube, you can also do that. So I've got product listings of all my camera equipment and my lights and such, but then I also have links to my own personal like tshirt store and merchandise store that has bags and coffee cups and those type of things. Also, some people make money from endorsements, so if you're endorsed with the guitar company or an emerging stream company or something that you seek out and you think you like their product and you'd want to endorse them, sometimes people will give you money for that, or even free stuff that you would normally have to pay for, ultimately, that's money saved, which is also earned!
Finally, fan corporate and foundation type funding.
So obviously, there are crowdfunding sites out there that you can still work with that are still popular to use, kickstarter, etcetera, there's also sponsorship opportunities for people, like if you think a brand really lines up with your mission and of your goals as an artist, or just your social causes, you can reach out to these companies and show them a history of what you've been doing and how it relates to their brand, you'd be surprised how many people might say yes to you and giving in some form or kind that would really help you out with maybe expenses or just in free stuff, the idea here is just to be creative and just to come up with ways that you can seek sponsorship for what you do, sponsorship is something that is required to think outside of the box, because whenever you're bringing this to somebody, it's really important that they know that you have their best interests at heart as well. The best way to get a sponsorship is to have a friendship first. Another way for you to get funding in this subgroup is called grants, and I think we all know what they are, but often I feel like we don't really look out into the world to see what is available. My friend Steven Wood, who is an unbelievable composer, but he's also a nature activist, he finds grants like this all the time where they'll take them and pay for him to go into these deep wilderness places, and he'll compose music on something very simple, like a handheld piano or something, and then he'll take that music back, score it, turn it into a piece, and then have it performed for a particular organization, for example. It's creative thinking like that, and these times that takes your ideas to where you are right now to a whole another level so be creative and just take a look and do some Google searching and see what you can find out on the internet, you might be surprised what fits you. So that was a lot. Go to this website down below, click on it, read through everything and figure out some things that you're not doing right now that could be making you money.