While we all probably want to make it big in the music business, the simple fact is, most of us won’t. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a living with your music. At all times, you should be trying to get your music out there. But you should establish earnings goals as well. If you’re making your living with music, even a modest living, that means you’ll be able to focus on and improve your craft without having to worry about getting another job to sustain yourself. And that, in turn, improves your chances of making it big. In this article, we discuss what it would take to make $30,000/year selling your music.
Let’s look at the different ways that an artist can make money:
- Selling physical albums: This one is obvious, however it is still a viable way to make money. You can sell physical albums at shows or on the street. Selling physical albums allows you to keep most of the revenue because you don’t have to pay the vendor. It costs about $1 to have a professional looking CD pressed so if you sell an album for $10, $9 is profit.
- Selling digital albums and singles: You can sell your albums on iTunes, eMusic, or CDBaby. If you sell your albums in these marketplaces you’ll have to give anywhere between 25 and 33 percent to the vendor. While this is a significant chunk of your revenue, selling digital music often allows you to reach a wider customer base and this access may make this revenue stream worth pursuing. Additionally, because the music business is largely singles-based now, it is important to have your songs available a la cart as people often like to pay for only a song or two out of your album.
- Doing shows: Starting to do shows is sort of a catch 22. You have to have a fan base in order for a venue to want you to perform, however you need to be performing to grow your fan base. While this initial promotion is not going to be discussed in this article, it will be the main topic of a future post. Smaller venues will often pay $50-$150 bucks or a portion of cover to performing artists.
- Streams: Although you won’t make much, your music should be on streaming sites anyway. Get your music on Pandora, Youtube, etc. A standard rate for a stream is anywhere from $0.0003 to $0.009.
- Selling Merchandise and Clothing: I read a story about the lead singer of the Dresden Dolls who, after Twittering with her 30,000 followers came up with a shirt idea and ended up selling $19,000 worth of shirts in a single day. While replicating these kinds of numbers is probably not going to happen, there’s no reason why you couldn’t work with your fans and maybe create a monthly shirt.
The goal should not be to make a ton of money in one of these areas, but to make some money in all of them. If you are going to make $30,000/year, you will be making an average of $2500/month. You can get to that $2500 in a number of ways. For example, you could:
- sell 300 singles on iTunes and eMusic for about $200
- sell 100 albums for around $700
- do 6 shows for $900
- get 20,000 streams for $100
- sell 30 shirts for $600
Play around with those numbers and find the right mix for you. Then set a goal for what you want to accomplish next month.