It can be a hard journey for up and coming musicians and artists to have a steady cash flow for their career. The costs of being a performing music artist can begin to stack up quickly. If you are currently active in your career, you can relate. With 2019 being the year of learning, it called for creativity when finding ways to make money from music online, at events, and more. Here are some tips and ideas for making money to fund and accelerate your career:
1. Understand What You Have
The music you create and the brand you establish are valuable assets. Understand what you have. A recorded asset, a publishing asset, lyrics, and something that can monetize in dozens of ways. So an asset is something that, if nourished, can provide money for an eternity, and can make you money while you are sleeping.
2. Lead with The Gems
According to Ecology.com, every day, there are 360,000 births in the world. If your target fans are 18 years olds, that means every day; there are roughly 300,000 new potential fans for you to attract. Think of them when you release content. Because every day you have a chance to put your best songs, best photos, best product out there for people to make a choice. Conversely, when you put low-quality material out there, you are missing an opportunity. Review your content, photos, images, from time to time. Finally, if you’re not proud of it, or you have something that is an improvement, take them down, or bury them.
3. Make Money to Sign Bigger
Most artists struggle to make ends meet, so when a label offers them a $25,000 advance, it seems like a large sum of money. If your band is already financially stable, $25k won’t seem like a big deal. You want to be in a position to negotiate a better record deal. Maybe a joint venture. You could also make deals that dedicate more of those dollars to marketing, music videos, advertising, or upgrading your live show.
4. What is Your Shopping Experience?
The consumption of your music needs to be polished and effortless. Still, it needs to be an experience. Think about the process of buying some of your favorite brands. What about that experience that makes you continue to buy from them? Go through the process of discovering and buying your band’s brand and products. Is it ideal? Does your best stuff come up first? Did you find the track you want playing first? What’s preventing people from discovering or buying your music and merchandise? Optimize the discovery and conversion process for your band.
5. 1,000 True Fans
The title to this tip is a concept created by Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine, in a blog post he wrote called 1,000 True Fans. It’s a math equation that makes much sense for musicians, especially unsigned bands. If you are a creator and you have direct access to your fans and no record label or publisher in your way, you can maximize the income from 1,000 true fans and still make the same living as you would having a much larger audience.