Wish to receives a commission on your musical abilities?
As a musician, there are extra methods to earn cash than ever earlier than. Dozens upon dozens of the way, the truth is!
Whilst you ought to, in fact, prioritize sure income streams as an artist who creates unique music, there are occasions — maybe while you’re first rising your profession —while you simply gotta pay the payments.
And in that case, placing your music expertise to make use of positive beats a job outdoors of music, proper? Particularly if your musical side-hustle helps you keep sharp as an instrumentalist, arranger, producer, educator, or content-creator.
That will help you get a way of the wide selection of choices on the market, I’ve put collectively an inventory of 75 methods you may make cash out of your music, grouped by class for straightforward scanning.
Streaming & Digital Gross sales
1. Streaming Income: Earn cash from streaming exercise while you get your tracks onto platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, or TIDAL.
2. Digital Downloads: Promote MP3s, WAVs, or FLACs of your tracks on platforms like iTunes, Amazon, ReverbNation, Bandcamp, or your individual web site.
3. Social Video Monetization: Receives a commission when individuals create social content material utilizing your music in movies on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Fb, and extra.
4. Monetize Your YouTube Channel: Generate promoting income from viewer exercise by yourself YouTube movies, and use extra creator instruments to monetize subscriber engagement.
Music Recording Work
5. Music Manufacturing: Put your producing expertise to work for different artists. Receives a commission in factors, upfront charges, co-writer splits, or no matter different association is smart for you and your collaborator.
6. Engineering: Are you good at recording, mixing, or mastering? Let different artists know! This could be a nice income between your individual recording initiatives or excursions.
7. Session Participant: Acquired abilities as an instrumentalist or vocalist? Are you fast at studying and arranging tunes? Recording periods will be a good way to receives a commission whereas not tying up an excessive amount of of your time without delay. You’ll be able to attend periods in individual, or do distant session work from your individual dwelling studio.
8. Studio Operator: Do you personal plenty of recording gear that goes unused while you’re not making music? Perhaps it’s time to contemplate renting out your studio to different engineers, producers, and artists.
9. Cellular Recording: Whether or not it’s vacation spot recording (“My band rented an airbnb and we wish to flip it right into a studio”) or capturing reside audio for different bands at their reveals, generally having a transportable studio could make all of the distinction in getting the job.
Music Publishing & Licensing
10. Mechanical Royalties: Accumulate this type of publishing royalty when your unique songs — together with covers by different artists — get streamed, downloaded, or pressed on CD/vinyl.
11. Efficiency Royalties: Earn this music publishing cash when your unique music is carried out reside in venues or publicly broadcast on radio and TV.
12. Sync Licensing (Songwriter Aspect): For those who write your individual songs and retain the publishing rights, you may get paid an upfront payment — and in some instances, ongoing royalties — when your music is positioned in movie, TV, video games, commercials, and many others.
13. Sync Licensing (Label Aspect): Identical goes for the “recording” facet of the equation. For those who personal your individual tracks, you’re the label, and might receives a commission for sync placements.
14. Compose for Music Libraries: Prolific composer or producer? You might write music for music collections which might be particularly curated for sync licensing alternatives.
15. Promote Sheet Music: The unique supply of “music publishing” income! Relying in your style, this could be a massive vendor. (New Age Piano, anybody?) However don’t simply consider notation; you possibly can additionally do chord-charts, tablature, lyric sheets, and extra.
Stay Music Performances
16. Touring and Stay Reveals: Play reside and receives a commission. This income might come within the type of ticket gross sales, door splits, bar percentages, or a assured payment from the venue proprietor.
17. Residency Gig: Identical type of fee choices as above, however a residency is a recurrently scheduled factor. It could possibly be “7 nights in a row in July” or “Each different Thursday all yr.”
18. Home Live shows: Play intimate concert events in non-public properties. These will be nice fan-building experiences and assist you to promote plenty of merch, whereas lowering strain for large turnout. Plus it can save you on journey bills if the host places you up for the night time.
19. DJing: For those who’re not touring, you possibly can DJ occasions, events, or venues in your hometown. On the street? Do a DJ set at a pageant or venue between your tour dates.
20. Company Gigs: Wish to receives a commission massive bucks whereas coming into The Twilight Zone? Play at a company perform. It’s surreal. And profitable.
21. Weddings and Non-public Occasions: Carry out at weddings, bar mitzvahs, anniversaries, household Christmas events, birthdays, and different kinds of personal occasions. These can typically pay higher than a normal venue gig.
22. Metropolis or Municipal Occasions: The annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, the summer time beer backyard within the park, the Arts Stroll. Examine together with your native chamber of commerce or metropolis council for alternatives.
23. Festivals: It’s nice to play music festivals, in fact, but additionally analysis non-music gatherings which have reside music as a part. Beer festivals. Balloon festivals. Meals festivals.
24. Busking: Play in a public house with plenty of foot site visitors for ideas. Subway stations. City squares. Boardwalks and piers. Simply test the native ordinances first. Get a allow, if required.
25. Be within the Home Band: Just like a residency, the place you keep put and completely different audiences come to you, search out efficiency alternatives the place you back-up different singers. May very well be live-band karaoke, a giant band or jazz group, and many others.
26. Play Cruise Ships: For those who don’t thoughts small rooms and plenty of months at sea, cruise ship gigs offer you an opportunity to play rather a lot (generally a number of gigs per day), and supply downtime to give attention to follow, recording, studying, and many others.
27. Nursing Properties: Whereas these aren’t glamorous gigs, they are often very significant for the viewers and also you because the performer. They’ll pay properly, are normally shorter units, and have the potential to grow to be reliable repeat gigs.
28. Digital Performances: Wish to mix the unique and intimate feeling of a home live performance with the comfort of livestreaming? Play a non-public, digital efficiency on Zoom, Google Hangouts, and many others.
Music Merch Gross sales
29. Artist Merchandize: Promote merch at gigs, in your web site, and on platforms like Instagram and Spotify. Objects might vary from t-shirts to mugs to books.
30. Bodily Music Codecs: Regardless of what you might have heard, followers nonetheless buy CDs, vinyl information, and even cassettes. Provide them in all the identical locations you’d your merch, in addition to in file shops by way of bodily distribution or consignment.
31. Restricted-Version Releases: Provide limited-edition or signed bodily copies of your music to followers. As an illustration, you possibly can promote tour-specific recordings that may by no means once more be obtainable to buy.
32. Digital merch: Not all merchandise have to be bodily. You’ll be able to supply PDFs of your tour diary or poetry. A digital cookbook. An unlock of a secret video.
33. Digital “Field Set”: Identical goes for music recordsdata. You might have a trove of unreleased recordings. Give followers paid entry! Or bundle every little thing you’ve ever recorded right into a digital package deal with bonus tracks.
34. NFTs: “Non-Fungible Tokens.” These are crypto property on a blockchain that signify possession or engagement in some piece of music, imagery, group, paintings, or monetary association.
Music Training
35. Educate Music: Whether or not it’s non-public classes or a teleconference tutorial, you possibly can assist different individuals get higher at an instrument, music manufacturing, or songwriting.
36. Music Remedy: Put your expertise to make use of in a therapeutic approach that helps individuals enhance their well-being.
37. On-line Programs: Create and promote a digital course. It could possibly be about your instrument, or your music-biz and promo expertise. Numerous upfront work, however with the potential for it to grow to be extra “passive” earnings as soon as your advertising funnel is up and working.
38. Music Workshops: Host IRL or on-line group gatherings the place studying and suggestions occurs in a gaggle setting.
39. Visitor Lectures: Converse at colleges, schools, or music seminars. These are sometimes paid alternatives, however even should you’re an unpaid speaker at a music convention, you need to have the possibility to make a fast gross sales pitch on the finish of your discuss or promote books afterwards.
40. Music Transcription: Are you good at determining complicated harmonies, blistering bluegrass breaks, or well-known saxophone solos? You might earn cash transcribing that music note-for-note. It may be work-for-hire earnings, or you possibly can publish these transcriptions in a ebook. Or on YouTube (with the potential of incomes advert income).
Crowdfunding & Fan Assist
41. Undertaking-Primarily based Crowdfunding: Use platforms like Kickstarter or GoFundMe to lift cash from followers to help a particular recording, tour, advertising, or video undertaking.
42. Membership Golf equipment: You should use a subscription-model platform like Patreon, or construct your individual on-line fan subscription by means of your web site. In trade for month-to-month fee, followers get unique or early entry to content material and different perks.
43. Fan Donations: Settle for donations instantly from followers by means of platforms like PayPal or Venmo. These hyperlinks will be listed in your web site, livestreams, and even pinned to the highest of your Spotify profile.
44. Livestream Assist: That is income followers offer you for livestreaming. However in contrast to the Venmo or PayPal ideas talked about above, it will probably come within the type of a platform-specific foreign money or motion: Stars, Bits, Subs, and many others.
45. VIP Experiences: Provide your diehard followers the possibility to pay for an unique expertise. Backstage passes, meet-and-greets, watch the soundchecks, dinner earlier than the present, images and autographs.
Music Composition
46. Songwriting for Different Artists: For those who’re a prolific author, you might have concepts to spare! Pitch your unreleased songs to different artists, publishers, or labels. Or collaborate with co-writers to make new songs. Repeatable success on this space takes plenty of dedication, however might result in a publishing deal.
47. Write Jingles: Ya know, the catchy (and generally annoying) music that performs throughout commercials? There’s cash to be made the place artwork meets promoting.
48. Movie Scoring: Compose music for movies, TV reveals, and documentaries. Like many areas of specialization, this discipline can require plenty of time and dedication. Contemplate accordingly how typically and while you wish to settle for scoring work.
49. Video Sport Music: In principle, this isn’t that completely different from movie scoring. Besides that gaming has its personal musical tropes, so the reference factors could differ from cinematic orchestration and sound design. Many video video games additionally function songs that grow to be a part of the sport’s soundtrack, which refers again to sync licensing. Lastly, there’s a complete huge ecosystem of VGM covers on YouTube, the place artists do their very own inventive preparations of well-liked online game music. So should you play a singular instrument, this may offer you a technique to differentiate your self: Halo on accordion, Ultimate Fantasy on metallic guitar, Zelda on harmonica, Mario Bros on banjo.
50. Promote Beats and Pattern Packs: Are you a prolific producer in a style that depends closely on digital music, reminiscent of hip-hop, pop, or EDM? You’ll be able to assist different artists get an enormous musical help by promoting your beats, production-starts, and pattern packs.
51. Write Customized Songs: Let your followers know you’ll compose and file personalised songs for particular events like weddings or birthdays. Simply make sure you cost sufficient on your precise effort and time!
52. Sound Design and Audio Branding: Create “audio logos” and “sound identities” for companies. Or use your manufacturing expertise to make sound results and audio environments for media, public areas, or different commissioned initiatives.
Retail & Venue Work
53. Report Retailer: Gig at night time and work at a file retailer in the course of the day. You’ll keep on high of the newest music releases, as properly brush up on the classics.
54. Music Retail: Fairly be close to devices? Work at a music retailer and develop your experience within the newest gear, used instrument valuation, and extra.
55. Making or Repairing Devices: Good at fixing guitars? Carving violins? Soldering results pedals or synths? You might begin your individual enterprise or work out of an current store or retailer.
56. Expertise Purchaser: Already in communication with a big community of gifted musicians? Put these social and group expertise to make use of reserving the acts at a neighborhood venue.
57. Venue Workers: Desire extra of the “on the bottom” venue expertise? You might be a bartender, bouncer, field workplace assistant, or venue supervisor.
58. Stay Sound Engineer: Each good venue wants good reside sound. You might be the important thing to creating that occur. Bonus factors should you’re not a grump!
Different Music Professions
59. Music Journalism: Write present previews, album evaluations, function interviews, and extra. You might discover a possibility to do that as a side-gig on your native newspaper or arts weekly.
60. Musicology, Criticism, Editorial, and Curation: Put your deep data and fervour for a selected style to make use of. Educate others about that historical past. Or make music suggestions and thrilling connections for listeners.
61. Member of an Orchestra: Jazz, Classical, Ballet, or the pit-orchestra for Musical Theater. When you have nice technical facility in your instrument and reliable sight-reading expertise, you possibly can make a dwelling in a big ensemble.
62. Non secular Music: Whether or not it’s the organist in a cathedral, the guitarist in a praise-and-worship band, the cantor at a temple,… many religions have music as a part of their common service.
63. Voice Expertise: When you have singing voice, you may be capable of translate these dramatic expertise to offer voiceovers, audiobook readings, or character voices.
Model Collaborations
64. Model Sponsorships: Associate up with some firm who shares your values and aesthetic, and receives a commission while you rep their merchandise, companies, or mission.
65. Endorsements: Get discounted (or generally free) services reminiscent of devices, music advertising instruments, or music manufacturing software program. In trade, you agree to make use of that gear in public and supply testimonials.
66. Affiliate Advertising and marketing: Promote a sure product in your web site, do gear evaluations, and hyperlink to the producer or retailer, and earn a fee on any gross sales.
67. Be an Influencer: “Influencer Advertising and marketing?” Simpler mentioned than executed, however… in case you have a big social following, you might be able to monetize that spotlight by doing product placements or promo shoutouts.
Miscellaneous
68. Books, eBooks, & Audiobooks: I suppose this might go below the “merch” part, however that’s extra concerning the closing product and gross sales. Changing into an writer is an endeavor all its personal, in fact. However should you already show a knack for lyric-writing, you might have longer-form literary expertise too. It could possibly be fiction, non-fiction about musicology, essays about band drama and tour mishaps, and even written instrument instruction with accompanying illustrations.
69. Music Running a blog: I discussed above that you possibly can write evaluations for an current publication, however you possibly can additionally host evaluations by yourself website within the hopes of monetizing your weblog by means of advert placements and affiliate income.
70. Podcasting: Begin a podcast about your music, adventures, or different pursuits. For those who get adequate engagement, you possibly can monetize by means of adverts, sponsorships, or listener help.
71. Competitions: These could possibly be rap battles, songwriting challenges, bluegrass competitions. There could also be an entry payment, however that additionally means there could possibly be a giant payout should you win.
72. Interactive Music Experiences: When you have blended media or web-development expertise, you possibly can create an immersive real-world or digital expertise. Emma McGann’s multi-player “Monsterverse” RPG in Discord is a superb instance. You’ll be able to ask your followers to pay to take part, or you should utilize it as an opportunity to drive merch gross sales on the finish of the expertise.
73. Consulting Providers: Musicians need assistance, strong recommendation, and networking connections. Are you able to mentor somebody in administration, crowdfunding, digital promoting, or one thing else? Present that technique recommendation in trade for a payment.
74. Open-Supply Collaboration: That is while you make some inventive work obtainable for others to make use of, with no clear thought of who will collaborate, or what precisely will consequence. Making stems downloadable for remixers is an apparent instance. You’ll be able to approve your favourite remixes and formally distribute these tracks, splitting any income the remix generates. However artists like Holly Herndon and Grimes took it one step additional with AI fashions of their vocals.
75. __________: Sure, a clean house, as a result of if there are 75 objects on this record already, there’s sure to be many extra methods to generate income out of your musical expertise. And I needed to go away room so that you can think about your individual potentialities. Have enjoyable!
Conclusion
Most musicians won’t ever deal with each merchandise on this record, and that’s fully tremendous. They shouldn’t. All of us have our personal specialties and pursuits. Finest to give attention to what’s rewarding, each when it comes to private progress and revenue.
However hopefully this lengthy record provides you an outline of your choices as you make a profession of your music, and as you complement your major music earnings sources with extra income streams.