earning money

The best way to protect your career diversify your Income

Too many persons like the creatives – artiste, music producers depend on only what they are doing ( working with the artist, recording them, shows, selling music) to earn money. One of the traps you might end up in is if the music is not selling and you are not getting shows how are you going to eat or make money. what do you do then?

The alternative is to diversify your income. Create by-products of the service your offer.

For example, creating a clothing line.

Artiste such a Konshens, Vybz Kartel Jay z and others all have a clothing line or another company selling something besides music.

Examples:

  • Konshens – Kons 876
  • Vibes Kartel- street Vybz rum
  • PDiddy- Sean Combs
  • Jay Z – Rockerwearater

This alternative is another source of income, independent of the main income. There are unique ways to add to what you are doing to earn a living. Though primarily the focus may be making money, the bottom line is that you are creating a safety net in order to earn.

Consider this, if you are not booked for a show for some time, no music is selling. Ask yourself the question ” what else is there to do to earn an income?” After a while, you’d like to start a business. you have the option to do something else. It may not be a merch line, where you sell branded products. Other options may include speaking engagement, and related events supporting a cause.

For example:

The staging of a conference addressing how you overcame an issue. You collaborate with other persons, give the event a title, then charge for the event. This is now an income stream.

The basic thought is to determine what else can you do to be used to diversify your income.

In essence, you do not want to depend on one venture as your source of income as a creative person. Keep in mind there will be down times meaning no shows, no music sales. If you are a producer, you may not get as many clients for a period. You have to find other things to do to fill the void in order to manage.

There’s no need for stress or worry when these times come. You are protecting yourself.

Living in a country like Jamaica, for example, there’s is the idea that there are limited options apart from merchandise. Instead, you think globally. With the internet, you are able to create small businesses and sell products or services to persons without the worry of storage or establishing a physical location to sell your goods. you have direct access to the consumer.

There are services that allow you free access to set up your store. This is just one of several options.

You have skills that you can promote and charge for service as a freelancer. Persons will pay for the service.

You may be good at marketing and social media persons can pay you to manage their social media page or run campaigns. If you are an accountant you can charge persons to manage their personal or small business accounts or another artist.

Branch out, at the end of the day the income that comes in overtime adds up. For instance, you do five shows consecutively and earn fifty thousand ($50000), and at the same time you are managing a social media account for a small business for a period of 6 months. you receive $50,000. Adding the 2 two incomes you have a total income of $100,000 per month. If you have a clothing line that brings in $100,000 that’s an additional $100,000.

Evaluating your monthly income all together with what your expenses are, there should be an adequate amount to cover the expenses. You are able to save and expand doing whatever it is. In the event, you decide on doing other things you have a protective base for your income and investment options.

How to get paid for the work you do

One of the worse things is doing work and not getting paid

You pour your heart out getting everything perfect. You spend the time, busting your brain figuring out every detail. Taking the time to craft the masterpiece and deliver it on time to the client. Finally, the stress is over and you can move on with your life and get paid.

Then the unthinkable. Nothing. Silence. No comment about the job. Nothing. You don’t even get paid.

As a freelancer, this is one of the most frustrating experience I have ever faced. Not receiving feedback from a client and worse not getting paid after all the hard work you put in. Is it a lack of principles? Is it a lack of good judgment when accepting the work from a client? What is it that makes not getting paid sucks so much.

We must ensure we protect ourselves from deceptive clients. This will ensure we get paid for the hard work we put in. No one likes getting a six for a nine and lots of stories and excuses. And worse of all no one likes doing work and not getting paid.

Here are some things that will help you guard against deceptive clients.

Ask for a deposit

Getting money upfront helps to ease the cashflow burden. You get a percentage of the total fee and start the work. This proves the client is committed to getting the job done. The process has begun. But asking for it is very uncomfortable. It’s very simple but uncomfortable.

Here’s an example of how you can do it.

You: to do this project will cost you $25,000.

Client: Ok, I can work with that, when do we begin.

You: We can start this week. But I’ll need a 20% deposit when with the signed contract.

That’s it. Nothing complicated about it and this can be done via email.

Get all your money upfront

Asking for all your money upfront can be a pre-qualifier to weed out bad clients. You might lose sales doing this but at the end of the day when you start the job, you are already paid. All the money worries are out the door and you can work on the project stress-free.

Here’s an example of how you ask for payment in full.

You: To do this project will cost you $25,000.

Client: Ok, I can work with that, when do we begin.

You: We can start this week. But I’ll need full payment with the signed contract.

Ensure you get paid before you deliver the final product

Nothing is worse than delivering on your end only to no hear from the person ever again. To prevent this ensure they pay you in full and you deliver the final product. Fair is fair. If there are any changes that need to be made you can quickly make adjustments and move on.

Conclusion

All in all, asking for money is uncomfortable. But if you don’t ask you won’t get paid. I had to learn to ask for money and get comfortable explaining the cost of my different offerings.

How much money you need to make music your full time career

One of the biggest misconceptions about the music industry people make is that you can’t make a living doing music. What if I told you there’s a way to make a living doing music. But before you go off and jump in you need to know how much money you need to make in order to make.

Don’t worry it’s a rather simple process you just need a pen and a piece of paper. If you are an excel savvy then you can use that as well.
What are your basic expenses

To get started there’s some basic information you’ll need. The first set is how much do you spend on average on the things to keep a roof over your head. The bare minimum necessities. These are your utilities: water and light bill. Your rent or mortgage payment and internet bill.

Why start here? This is because these are your must-have expenses outside of food. These are the things you pay before anything else.

To find these out just look at your last 3 months bill, add them up and divide it by three. This will give you the average amount you spend on each per month. This will give you a baseline figure to work with.

For example:

  • Light: JA$3,000
  • Water: JA$2,500
  • Rent: JA$25,000
  • Internet: JA$5,000

How much food do you eat per month

The next thing you need to calculate is how much money you spend on food each month. This might be hard for some if you don’t track it. What you need to know is how much money you spend on breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Anything in between like snacks and so on.

What you are doing now is besides having a roof over your head you are working out how much money you need to feed yourself and your family if you have a family.

If you’re on a special diet this should be easy because all you are doing is working out how much each item cost and having a final figure. Don’t worry if price change from time to time because this is just a basic figure to work out the final figure.

  • Grocery: JA$35,000

How much money do you spend on travelling

The next thing is how much money do you spend travelling. This should include going to the studio, shows. If you drive this should be gas to put inside your car and basic maintenance monthly. If you take the bus this should include bus fare and taxi fare.

If you are making car payment leave it out of this section we’ll get to that later.

Your paper should look something like this now.

  • Gas: JA$20,000

What other expenses do you have on a monthly basis

The final thing you need to write down is other expenses you have per month. This includes debt repayment, entertainment expenses, and spending. Studio time and other cost relating to investing in your music.

You can also make plans to save for the future and invest your money in other non-music related activities. If you have children this can include school-related expenses. Medical expenses. What you don’t want is to leave stuff out and you have surprises later down the road.

  • Car payment: JA$ 25,000
  • Studio time: JA$ 6,000
  • Saving: JA$ 4,000
  • School: JA$ 7,000
  • Medical: JA$6,000

Calculate how much money you need to live on a daily basis

Now is the time to tally all your figures to see how much money you should be aiming for each month from music. Your page should like the table below

Expense Amount JA

Light: 3,000

Internet 5,000

Rent: 25,000

Water: 2,500

Grocery: 35,000

Gas: 20000

Car payment: 25,000

Studio time: 6000

Saving: 4,000

School: 7,000

Medical: 6000

Final: 138,500

So from the example, you’ll need JA$138,500 to live on monthly. Whatever your figure is on your sheet. This is your goal to aim for monthly to make you dream of doing music full time a reality.

How you reach that goal is up to you because there are multiple ways to reach that target. Hope this is helpful and here’s a google docs template to get you started.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the music industry people make is that you can’t make a living doing music. What if I told you there’s a way to make a living doing music. But before you go off and jump in you need to know how much money you need to make in order to make

How much money you need to make music your full time career
One of the biggest misconceptions about the music industry people make is that you can’t make a living doing music. What if I told you there’s a way to make a living doing music. But before you go off and jump in you need to know how much money you need to make in order to make.
Don’t worry it’s a rather simple process you just need a pen and a piece of paper. If you are an excel savvy then you can use that as well.

What are your basic expenses

To get started there’s some basic information you’ll need. The first set is how much do you spend on average on the things to keep a roof over your head. The bare minimum necessities. These are your utilities: water and light bill.  Your rent or mortgage payment and internet bill.
Why start here? This is because these are your must-have expenses outside of food. These are the things you pay before anything else.
To find these out just look at your last 3 months bill, add them up and divide it by three. This will give you the average amount you spend on each per month. This will give you a baseline figure to work with.
For example:
  • Light: JA$3,000
  • Water: JA$2,500
  • Rent: JA$25,000
  • Internet: JA$5,000

How much food do you eat per month

The next thing you need to calculate is how much money you spend on food each month. This might be hard for some if you don’t track it. What you need to know is how much money you spend on breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Anything in between like snacks and so on.
What you are doing now is besides having a roof over your head you are working out how much money you need to feed yourself and your family if you have a family.
If you’re on a special diet this should be easy because all you are doing is working out how much each item cost and having a final figure. Don’t worry if price change from time to time because this is just a basic figure to work out the final figure.
  • Grocery: JA$35,000

How much money do you spend on traveling

The next thing is how much money do you spend traveling. This should include going to the studio, shows. If you drive this should be gas to put inside your car and basic maintenance monthly. If you take the bus this should include bus fare and taxi fare.
If you are making car payment leave it out of this section we’ll get to that later.
Your paper should look something like this now.
  • Gas: JA$20,000

What other expenses do you have on a monthly basis

The final thing you need to write down is other expenses you have per month. This includes debt repayment, entertainment expenses, and spending. Studio time and other cost relating to investing in your music.
You can also make plans to save for the future and invest your money in other non-music related activities. If you have children this can include school-related expenses. Medical expenses. What you don’t want is to leave stuff out and you have surprises later down the road.
Car payment: JA$ 25,000
Studio time: JA$ 6,000
Saving:JA$ 4,000
School: JA$ 7,000
Medical: JA$6,000

Calculate how much money you need to live on a daily basis

Now is the time to tally all your figures to see how much money you should be aiming for each month from music. Your page should like the table below

Expense
Amount JA
Light:
3,000
Internet
5,000
Rent:
25,000
Water
2,500
Grocery:
35,000
Gas:
20000
Car payment
25,000
Studio time
6000
Saving
4,000
School
7,000
Medical
6000
Final
138,500
So from the example, you’ll need JA$138,500  to live on monthly. Whatever your figure is on your sheet. This is your goal to aim for monthly to make you dream of doing music full time a reality.
How you reach that goal is up to you because there are multiple ways to reach that target.
Hope this is helpful and here’s a google docs template to get you started.

3 myths about becoming a recording artist

Have you ever wanted to become a recording artist? Have you been writing original songs but not sure what to do with them? Do you have the desire to sing your songs in front of a live audience?

Then becoming a recording artist is the next step. But with that comes some misconception that might prevent you from making that next step.

Below I share 3 myths about becoming a recording artist.

Myth #1: You won’t make any money

One of the biggest concerns you might have is how will I make money from my music. But in the modern day music industry, there are multiple ways to earn a living from being a recording artist.

Live shows

Performing live is one way to make a living as a recording artist. The more songs you have the more you would want to perform those songs for people. These present various opportunities for you to book live shows. This can be people hiring you to sing at their concert or you hosting your own shows.

How you make money from live shows, the promoter book you to perform. You get paid either from a fee upfront or a percentage from ticket sales or drink sales. This can be a lucrative way to build a career once done right.

Selling Music

The most basic way to make money from music is selling the recordings to fans. With downloads on the decline, streaming is the new way to sell music. Once your music is on available on all streaming services fans can listen whenever they want.

This is ideal because instead of one transaction your fans will listen to your songs over and over. The more they listen, the more money you make from your songs.

Teaching music

During your downtime, you can teach somebody how to play an instrument. If you’re a good vocalist you can offer vocal lessons. This will help you refine your skills as well as mentor other people to do what you do.

Music licensing

Licensing your music for movies and adverts are another way to make money from music. This will open up new doors for your songs by exposing it to new audiences. The process involves either working with an agent or through a service. WHat they will do is get the right people to pay you to use your music.

Selling merchandise

Selling T-Shirts, caps, mugs etc gives you more income as a recording artist. Your core fans will want other items you have as a collectable. This can be an upsell to your shows and other events that you perform.

Myth #2: The field is oversaturated and I won’t get noticed

To be successful as a recording artist you need a fanbase. The more fans you have the sky’s the limit. It might sound cliche but if you build your fan base and have a direct way to contact them then you have the power.

Traditional methods of promoting music might not be working like normal. However social media and the internet are making tools available to get the same results.

Some of the things you can do now include growing your youtube subscribers. Build an email list of fans. Build relationships with key bloggers and media personalities. Set up your website to promote your music.

Myth # 3: It’s very expensive to produce music

The cost to produce music has gotten cheaper. This due to the fall in the price of quality recording equipment. With that said you can build a recording studio at your home for cheap.

Having your own studio will save you time to spend time on getting your sound right. Studio time becomes cheaper. Working with a producer becomes easier because you can collaborate over the internet.

You can also find producers to work with over the internet. Even if cost is an issue you can find one to fit your budget. So instead of doing an album you can produce singles and work from there.

Conclusion

There are multiple paths to take to make it as a recording artist. Hope looking over these myths can give you hope that you can take that plunge to become a recording artist.

How do you get your music on iTunes



After you have recorded your song, have it mixed and mastered the next thing you will need to do is have your music in places for them to buy it. So how do you do that when you live outside the USA or don’t have a distributor? I look to answer that question in today’s post.


Being outside the United States, or Europe, in order to get your music into music stores, you need a distributor. There are various distributors that you can get access to. You can use, eg. VP Records, Universal Records and such like. These entities have distributors, and their job is to get the music into stores.That may be the physical or digital format.


Independently as an artist, you can’t  get direct access to let’s say iTunes. To do so, you’ll need an aggregator. The aggregator is to see to it that you meet the criteria for the music distribution. eg.  they make sure the song title is ok, and so on, and then get the music to the stores.


Here are some aggregator options:
  1. cdbaby
  2. Tunecore
  3. Routenote
  4. Distrokid
  5. ReverbNation


Personal Experience with some aggregator

TuneCore

Tunecore cost 29 to start per album. $9 per single and a  yearly subscription 49.99 and no fees are deducted. Additionally, your music is put up on iTunes within 24hrs. The disadvantage to this arrangement comes if you earn less than $50 for the year, it can prove very costly due to the yearly subscription


Cdbaby

Cdbaby costs approximately $49 to have your music up on iTunes.You pay this fee once on subscription. There is, however, a percentage deduction hereafter.


Routenote

Route note will have you put up your music charge free. That’s if you sign up for the free option.15% is however taken after sales. To get all sales proceeds, you  may sign up for the premium option, at an approximate cost of $49


Distrokid

You pay $19 per year, and upload as much music as you like. ie: Distrokid is the best option. Besides that, if just starting out as an independent artist without money, you may use RouteNote. Over time as you build your career, you may transition to the other services such as Distrokid, as it would be the most cost-effective, compared to the others.


Analytics for DistroKid is real time. You can see purchases before payout. The same can be said for TuneCore, though more costly. 


The Overall Basics to Getting Started


1. High-resolution album artwork size and specifications are given and must be a square and should not include costing and other details.


2. Track Title
Name of each track is written by the given specifications and featured artist, are also written in like format.


3. Upload music
specifications:
TuneCore- WAV files

RouteNote and Distrokid  High-quality 320kb mp3  or wave 

4 ways to earn money doing music full time


The question is asked, how do you make money from making music as a recording artist?
Because there are multiple ways of earning income as an artist I’ll focus on four of the main ones.

Selling your albums and singles


The first way is by sales.  You may record an album, get it mixed and mastered, you package it by CDs, vinyl, cassette, flash drive, digital files, you sell those to the consumer, that is the person who loves to buy music. Persons may buy a physical or digital copy of your album to listen to over and over again.


Streaming  is another way to earn money. This is where persons listen to your music using a streaming service, just like on the radio. The more they listen to your song, the more money you earn. (for radio you earn  from royalty).

But streaming is similar in context. it’s online  and on demand. so persons listen to your song whenever they want, as much as they want. the more they listen to your music, the more money you earn.  Streaming is basically a numbers game. If you put out a song and persons listen to it less than 1000 times in a month, you might not make as much money compared to a major label artist, whose song is being listened to a million times or more. They make more money in terms of streaming because of the number of time fans listen to their songs.

The more persons you can get to listen to your song on streaming on platforms like Spotify, Deezer, Apple music, Amazon, it works out better for you as an artist. You can make more money because more persons are listening to your song.

Streaming tells which songs persons are gravitating towards. If you put out a single and a lot of persons listen to it, and it’s being spread, you know you have a hit, persons really like that song. You can put more of your promotional efforts into promoting that song.

Live Performances


The next thing outside of sales and streaming is shows. The more shows you get to perform at, the more money you can get. When you are booked for a show,  you can charge a performance fee.

If you work through a booking agent, the booking agent books you at a particular price, and they take a cut of say 20%, however, you agree. The more shows you perform the more money you can get once those shows are actually paid shows.

Performances can be viewed as  two- fold.  It is promotion as well as an avenue for you earning income. If your music is not selling, but you can get paid shows, then you are earning income.

Look at the situation in context, in terms of how much money you are going to earn per month to live. eg.  On average lin jamaica, most persons working in offices get at least $50.000 per month.  some might get less , some might get a lot more.

As a benchmark let’s say you need $50,000 per month to pay light, water bill, rent, buy food and pay for transportation to move around from studio to shows, you need to charge for your performance, a certain amount of money, for you to earn your $50,000. Once you do that, then shows can be another way of supplementing your income, in addition, to sales and streaming.


Selling Merchandise


Outside of performances, there’s the option of branding, in terms of merchandise. Putting your artist name on a t-shirt, you sell it at your shows, and you are earning an income from it. In addition to the performance and music sales. Consider this as expanding your income opportunity. Should either one fail, there are multiple options, but if not,  you know everything is going to your goal of $50,000 a month.  

Sponsorships


Another earning route is sponsorship. You may see an artist getting sponsored by a Digicel, FLOW  or a Wysnco; water, ocean spray. Companies pay them to advertise their product. Eg.  Usain Bolt, the only clothes brand you may see him wearing, is Puma. Puma sponsors Usain Bolt.  when Usain wears Puma,  it puts money in his pocket, just by wearing clothes.
Say you can create a powerful brand and leverage sponsorship opportunities from companies, that’s how to earn income from your music talent.


Conclusion


Sales, Streaming, Merchandise, Performance, and Sponsorship are four key areas to look at for building your career, as a musician. These things take time. The larger your audience , the more money you can earn. The smaller your audience, the less money you earn.

Once you look at leveraging other persons audiences,  and build your fan base over time, you can look to reaching the benchmark that you have set. This is how much money you need to earn per month to take care of yourself, and so you can grow your career over the long term, in music.


If you have questions leave them in the comments below. Share this with an artist who will find it helpful.