How to Make Money from Your Music

The music purist in you might find this title offensive, but I would say that it’s a glamorous simplication of what this blog is going to be taking a look at. There are a billion companies screaming for the dollars of starving indie musicians; it only seems logical that we musicians use our collective knowledge and experiences to help each other separate the good from the bad, so that our precious few dollars might result in real listeners, instead of credit card bills and despair that your songs have vanished into the void of obscurity.

Listeners=$$$. Sometimes.
We are assuming here that listeners=money. In reality this really isn’t the case, as many record labels enslave artists and hand them a giant bill before kicking them to the curb. See here:

Record Deal Graph

But I guess we are addressing the difference between selling 10 downloads and 1000 downloads, not VH1’s Behind the Music tragedies…

Since web and mobile technology are so ubiquitous and pretty addictive, we will be looking at a ton of that sort of stuff. Overall, we’ll tackle major revenue areas:

  • Licensing
  • Gigs
  • Physical CD sales
  • Online distribution
  • Class action lawsuits

And whatever else we come up with…